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59 7 The Ceramic Assemblage The study of Stentinello-style decorated ceramics has been long neglected.1 The subject warrants a major study effort all to itself, not simply for the Crotone area, but throughout the zone from which these pieces are recovered. Since the first description of this pottery in the late 19th century (Orsi 1890), very little synthetic work has been attempted (Ammerman 1985). Meanwhile, the area of recovery of substantial amounts of this pottery has been broadening to include Malta, Lipari (Bernabò Brea 1957), and a large portion of Calabria (Ammerman 1985a; Costabile 1972; Hodder and Malone 1984; Salvatori 1973). Apparent regional stylistic variation within the decorated corpus is remarked upon frequently (Ammerman 1983, 1985a), and is also the impression of this writer. The subject offers the interesting potential of having an unusual and complex decorative technique that covers a relatively confined geographic area and it seems to be an isolated and ultimately deadend offshoot from the general developmental trends in the region. As Bernabò Brea notes (admittedly from the perspective of an unrepentant diffusionist), the broader trends in southern Italian ceramic during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages—impressed, painted and subsequent—seem to proceed closely along the same lines as ceramic technology and fashion within the European side of the Mediterranean Basin (Bernab ò Brea 1980, 673). The Stentinello phenomenon is anomalous,2 and thus an excellent subject for the consideration of the meanings of decorative style in 1 A detailed study of the Capo Alfiere ceramics was Morter’s primary research project at the time of his death. Sixteen years after he wrote this, it remains true that there has been almost no detailed technological or stylistic study of Stentinello pottery, although there is hope that this will change in the near future with the publication of recent excavation at Bova Marina, Vulpiglia and other sites. (JR) 2 This appraisal of Stentinello pottery as anomalous reflects the view, prevalent among scholars of Italian prehistory at the time Morter was writing, that the general development throughout Italy was from impressed to painted wares. It is now clear, and even acknowledged elsewhere in Morter’s discussion, that painted pottery is generally typical of the Neolithic Balkans and eastern Italy but was never common in either western Italy or the western Mediterranean (e.g., southern France and Iberia). (JR) archaeologically, as opposed to ethnographically, derived ceramics.3 Previous Studies of Stentinello Ceramics As mentioned earlier, the Stentinello ceramic style was labeled after the type site of Stentinello, near Syracuse on the eastern Sicilian coast, by Paolo Orsi in the 19th century (Orsi 1890). Characteristic are the extremely elaborate impressed designs employed as decoration, frequently over much of a vessel’s surface. This material is a long-recognized horizon marker in Sicily (Bernabò Brea 1957; Tusa 1983), signaling the earliest occupations on Malta (as Ghar Dalam ware) and on the Aeolian islands, at the site of Castellaro Vecchio. It was judged to be a development of simpler impressed decorated pottery, one element of the Early Neolithic agricultural lifestyle spread around the western Mediterranean Basin, and so is generally assigned to the Middle Neolithic period.4 The elaborate impressed decoration of the Stentinello style can be contrasted with a more well known painted decorative tradition of Neolithic pottery— bichrome followed by trichrome—which is particularly well documented in southeastern Italy. Bichrome painted finds frequently co-occur in small quantities in Stentinello assemblages. Trichrome painted material , believed to be of east-central Italian inspiration, appears to have replaced Stentinello ceramics com3 That is, here is a regionally isolated and technologically distinct ceramic tradition, with an elaborate decorative repertoire. It presents the opportunity to ask why and how it maintained its distinctiveness, despite, as the evidence strongly suggests, contact with neighboring areas, and what happened when the subsequent Diana style came into use throughout the southern part of the peninsula and adjacent islands. There is also subregional variation within the Stentinello sphere itself. Hence the much pondered question: What is a ceramic decorative style or motif signaling? 4 This view must now be revised in the light of the three major Stentinello projects in Calabria (Acconia, Bova Marina, and Capo Alfiere itself). All three have established that elaborate geometric Stentinello wares are in use from at least the second half of the 6th millennium BC and probably several centuries earlier (e.g. Umbro). Hence Stentinello Wares are both Early and Middle Neolithic wares in Calabria. It seems possible that the style came into...

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