Material cultural vs social changes: inspecting prehistory from Late Bronze to Iron Age in Eastern Mediterranean through petro-archeometry

The stratigraphic sequence detected in Tell As area E4 provides evidences of a relatively unknown period in the Inner Syrian region; it is in the range between the end of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) and the beginning of Iron Age I, corresponding to atransitional period still debated in archeological literature. Among the dierent aspects that characterized this transition, the migration factor linked to the incoming "Sea People" is undoubtedly the one that drawn most attention of archaeologists and philologists. As it is well know, potteries production was sensitive to social and cultural changes; as a matter of fact, the circulation of dierent potteries or, otherwise, the local production of vessels with peculiar typological and stylistic features are in many cases indicative of specic cultural processes. In this sense, the absence in Tell As LBA horizons of Cypriot or Mycenaean imports and the appearance of Cypro-Aegean type vessels starting from the Iron Age testify the arrival in the site of a new "fashion" in the way of consuming food. From the historical point of view, this change cannot be separated from the movements of the Sea People. Of course, only a deep characterization of these productions and a certain provenance attribution might contribute to clarify these complex cultural and social processes. Theaim of this paper is, therefore, to support the archeological investigations about this transitional period. The results are based on the petro-archeometric study of potteries fragments sampled from Late Bronze Age to Iron Age horizons in Tell As (Syria). The nal goal of the work is to delineate the complex topic concerning the Sea People movements and their role in the formation of new cultural identities in the Eastern Mediterranean on the basis of the material culture changes.