La frontiera del pettine. Facies nella Protostoria della Sardegna

Based on the idea that archaeological facies are dynamic products of transmission and circulation of information in a given period and in a given territory, we will here consider Sardinia during the Recent Bronze Age. Despite the marked physical heterogeneity of the Sardinian territory, visible in the natural definition of regional districts, homogeneity and uniformity both of architectural manifestations and material culture productions are considered most significant in the Sardinian civilization of the Bronze Age. The compactness of the Nuragic cultural feature is not a constant factor. There are, however, time spans, such as the Recent Bronze Age, in which distinct facies can be well detected, within defined geographical areas without apparent permeability. The geographical distribution of pottery allows to hypothesise that during the Recent Bronze Age, within a common basis of typological repertoire, certain autonomous developments took place in the communities of the northern and southern part of the island. Indeed, this is the only period in which differences can be observed in the ceramic production between different parts of the island. In the Central-North of the island, the so-called “comb pottery” or “evolved comb pottery” is widespread. This pottery is characterised by pans decorated on the inside using combs. An analytic study of this pottery made it possible to highlight the spread of motives in some specific areas of the island and to compare its distribution within different contexts (domestic, funerary, cultic). Particularly interesting are the representations in funerary contexts of collective graves where the finding was concentrated in exedrae, i.e. the semicircular open space reserved for the rites of the death. In the South, another facies evolved, characterised by undecorated dark grey pottery, often very accurately made (the so-called “slate-grey” or “Nuragic- grey” or “Antigori” pottery facies). The reasons for this difference are still not clear, but it may be due to external influences, as the southern part of the island had more contact with the Mycenaeans. Indeed, the archaeological literature describes shared pottery shapes. Distinct elements, characterising the facies, were then grafted on this shared heritage represented by the presence or absence of particular shapes, decorations and pottery techniques. In this article we discuss about the meaning of the marked difference between these two parts of the island, although this difference is limited on the one hand to the use of a single decorative technique and on the other hand to the production of different typological forms in fine ceramics.