Tra la Corsica e il continente. L'Elba e i collegamenti marittimi dal Bronzo finale alla colonizzazione greca

The island of Elba, the largest island of the Tuscan archipelago, is since ancient times the central joint between the Tyrrhenian cabotage routes and the route to the large islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea (Corsica and Sardinia). Though the Neolithic is recognizable on the island of Elba only through scarce evidence, the presence of obsidian items demonstrates that in this period the island was already part of a wide network, especially with Corsica and Sardinia. From the Eneolithic, traces of settlement on the island seem in strong connection with the supplying and processing of copper ores, at least partially on the spot. Bronze objects and fragments are frequent in Elban sites lying next to copper outcrops. Analyses carried on some of these bronze items show anyway that they had been made with Sardinian (not Elban) copper. Metallurgy on the spot, with local and imported metal resources (mixed sulphides), suggests a high degree of organization and social complexity for the late Bronze Age - early Iron Age Elban communities, interested therefore in control of land and sea routes. Later (Hellenistic) literary evidence preserves the memory of bronze-working activity on the island in remote times. In Late Bronze Age - Early Iron Age the peculiar funerary custom (collective deposition in natural rock shelters) testifies to a deep cultural syncretism between the island of Elba and the central-northern territories of Sardinia and Corsica.