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Introduction John Robb and Domenico Marino Editorial Thoughts John Robb Jon Morter’s sudden death was tragic for all those who knew him. This volume is dedicated to Jon and, as was his original Ph.D. thesis, to his daughters, Kate and Clare Morter, and to his wife, Hillary Hutchinson. We wish also to remember his parents, Ron and Margaret Morter, and hope that in this book they may understand the high professional and personal esteem in which their son was held by his peers and friends. Yet an academic work cannot be published simply as a fond tribute, however sincerely felt and however worthy the memorial. Capo Alfiere is an extraordinary archaeological site with important implications for the Mediterranean Neolithic. What is more, it had the fortune—all too rare—of being dug by an archaeologist who merited an extraordinary site, who cared about the site, and who excavated it thoughtfully and well. We cannot claim that we are publishing Capo Alfiere as knowledgeably and thoroughly as Jon Morter would have done; but not to publish it at all would be a great loss. In preparing this posthumous work, we had at our disposal Jon’s doctoral thesis—a clear and well-reasoned site report—and a large but not comprehensive archive of site records, drawings, and photographs. Many analyses and inventories were inevitably incomplete ; Jon’s postdoctoral years were busy ones with many other commitments, and at the time of his death he was only beginning to reconsider the Capo Alfiere materials and their publication. For example, all materials besides ceramics and daub were inventoried fully, and strategic sampling of the pottery allowed Jon to lay clear its fundamental nature; but the task of compiling a single comprehensive inventory of all finds was still to be done. We have attempted to complete these tasks, and we think the present volume needs no apologies; it is a rare testament that the site can be published posthumously in as full a form as most Mediterranean prehistoric sites ever attain. The principal item we lack, more than any inventory or analysis, is Jon Morter’s knowledge and insight into Capo Alfiere. Nobody understands a site like its excavator. This raises the issue of editorial policy. Jon’s text has weathered the sixteen years since he wrote it better than most site reports and almost all doctoral dissertations would have done. Yet, inevitably, in re-reading Jon’s text, we encountered many points that Jon certainly would have changed for publication. The field has moved on considerably since he wrote his text in 1992; new specialist reports are now available for Capo Alfiere, there has been much new research at other sites, and general theoretical orientations in archaeology have shifted. He frequently posed questions to which we now know the answer, he sometimes uses information now known to be wrong, and in places he engages with questions that have been resolved or now seem dated. Hence an editorial dilemma: do we amend his text in a way that reflects what he might have done in light of the current state of knowledge, or do we leave it as he penned it? After reflection, we decided it was better to leave Jon’s original text, aside from minor edits for the sake of clarity. He wrote informed by a knowledge of the site that nobody else possessed, and we feared that in “improving” the text we might introduce errors or inconsistencies and obscure nuances that might yield insights into how he understood Capo Alfiere. Moreover, texts possess integrality; if one adds more-recent data to a table, one has to then modify the text discussing it, which means modifying the general interpretation of the topic, and potentially, the entire understanding of the site. We had no wish to see Jon’s original text unravel to be replaced by a new creation informed by a secondhand knowledge of the site. Our solution, therefore, is commentary and annotation . In this introduction, we provide a brief summary of Capo Alfiere’s local context, of work in the area since 1992, and of some salient points of inter- xvi Introduction pretation that highlight the site’s continuing importance . In the text itself, where there are points that require correction, or are confirmed, complemented or contradicted by more-recent information, this is discussed in a footnote signed with the editorial initials . We have complemented Jon’s text with supplementary studies from published and archive sources, new specialist studies...

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