The Adriatic seascape, as the Mediterranean’s northernmost extension, has long been an important crossroad of cultural exchanges between the East and the West. Here, connectivity and insularity served to link diverse peoples and cultures, with regional connectivity reaching its peak during the Iron Age. Concurrently, the Greeks embarked on extensive overseas journeys and established numerous settlements across the Mediterranean. One fascinating example to explore the dynamics between the locals and Greek colonists is the island of Hvar in central Dalmatia, which offers valuable insights through the examination of ceramic material culture. Using a range of traditional and state-of-the-art microscopic and spectroscopic analyses, a wide range of Greek and local Iron Age coarseware from the Greek colony of Pharos and local indigenous settlements was examined, with a particular emphasis on the practices involved in raw materials selection. A novel method for collecting elemental concentration data was implemented, which concentrates exclusively on the clayey substrate. This approach effectively mitigates any potential bias arising from the tempering of clay paste. Additionally, we conducted a geological survey of the island to identify plausible raw material deposits, considering that coarseware was predominantly produced locally. The findings of our study provide fresh perspectives on the lives of protohistoric local communities and their interactions with Greek settlers for whom the island of Hvar served as a hub from which Hellenistic culture spread throughout the insular and coastal Adriatic regions and beyond.

This research will put emphasis on a multidisciplinary approach to examine the Iberian stelae of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200-800 BC) involving petrographic, geochemical, and metallurgic analyses, complemented by experimental archaeology. The petrographic determination of the rock composition of 16 stelae provided evidence that hard magmatic, sedimentary, and meta-sedimentary rocks were used. The rocks were classified as quartz rich granite, leucocratic syenogranite-aplite, meta-arkose, quarzitic wacke, and silicate quartz-sandstone. Regarding the magmatic rocks, the finest available grain size was preferred. The sedimentary and meta-sedimentary rocks were carved on surfaces with a hard ground, a silicate – ferruginous cemented bed or on a joint wall.

For the archaeological experiment, a variety of lithic tools and bronze chisels with various alloys were replicated, based on original Late Bronze Age tools from Portugal and Spain. Some lithic tools were completely inapplicable, while others, for example an amoeboid diablastic and equigranular quartzite (99 % quartz), provided acceptable results. The carving results with bronze chisels were disillusioning, regardless of the alloy composition. A long-ignored iron chisel from the Late Bronze Age site of Rocha do Vigio (Portugal) was studied with metallography. It revealed a medium-high carbon content steel and the replication of this chisel resulted as the only effective tool, provided the edge was hardened. This would establish the introduction of iron technology as a terminus post quem for the group of silicate quartz-sandstone stelae in Extremadura. Indeed, many of Europe´s earliest irons were found in nearby Portugal.

*(DFG-project AR 1305/2-1), https://www.experimentalarchaeology.uni-freiburg.de/

Of twelve stelae from the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200-800 BC) that are exhibited in five museums in the Beira Interior (Portugal), ten are carved in granitoid rocks of mainly leucocratic composition. Between the Serra da Estrela and the river Tejo, 70 % of the area is covered by granitoid intrusions of pre-, syn- and post-orogenic Variscan age. Plutons intruded in metamorphic and meta-sedimentary rocks older than Late-Carboniferous. Only one stele each was extracted from the largest intrusions of the area, from the Guarda biotite-monzogranite, and one from the pre-orogenic Fundão hornblende bearing biotite-granodiorite to monzogranite. A precise provenience study is thus not possible.

Eight stelae where isotropic fine to medium grained granitoids with predominantly muscovite and rarely containing biotite. Microstructures, mineralogy, textural characteristics and geochemical analyses points to highly differentiated micro-plutonic rocks or dykes. Having realized that all twelve large granitoid intrusions in the Beira are less differentiated and porphyry, 16 aplite dykes and apophyses could be detected in a field study. Some aplite dykes in the northern part of the study area show the same composition variations as the Malhada Sorda pluton and its apophyses. But some dykes cannot be related with a late or post-orogenic intrusion. Seven syenogranite aplite rocks and apophyses could be related with a stelae rock type. Remarkably, all potential extraction sites are close to the place of stelae discovery, at the border of old communication routes, or near Late Bronze Age sites.

*(DFG-project AR 1305/2-1), https://www.experimentalarchaeology.uni-freiburg.de/

A petrographic and geochemical provenience analysis of meta-psammite Iberian Stelae from the Final Bronze Age will be presented. A provenience analysis of archaeological objects is a Sisyphean task or impossible when dealing with uniform rock composition and structure along strike as they occur in sedimentary formations. If there are no observable singularities along vertical and horizontal inter-digitations of facies, the specification of a possible extraction site is like searching a needle in a haystack. Geo-morphologic consideration helps to enhance the probability to find the outcrop if strike of formation is perpendicular to valleys or mountain ranges. Furthermore, post metamorphic folding and tectonic dismembering reduces the possible areas, and increases the probability to find appropriate outcrops.

The Beira Interior was metamorphosed during the Variscan Orogeny showing a metamorphic field gradient from amphibolite to sub-greenschist facies. The orogenic tectono-metamorphic pattern is disturbed by pluton intrusions and by aplite dykes. Metamorphic aureole zonation crosscuts formation strike and the orogenic metamorphic facies zonation. Therefore, areas with the same sedimentary lithotype (educt) and transformed to meta-sedimentary and metamorphic rocks (product) of a specific contact-metamorphic grade often postdates orogenic metamorphism and deformation. All these observations allow to drastically reduce the potential raw-material areas and to find outcrops showing the same educt-product genetic history as found in the rock-types of stelae. The very first application of metamorphic mapping techniques in combination with geo-morphology will be presented to clarify the provenience of archaeological objects.

*(DFG-project AR 1305/2-1), https://www.experimentalarchaeology.uni-freiburg.de/

In recent decades, Applied Geophysics has become firmly established among geoscientific methods in archaeology for the non-destructive prospection of archaeological remains in the subsurface. Significant contributions have been made by technical developments towards mobile multi-channel platforms that can survey even very large areas of Hundreds of hectares with high spatial resolution and positioning accuracy in cm-range. Today, magnetometry and ground penetrating radar are not only used in research projects targeting known archaeological sites, but also as a professional commercial service in linear and urban planning projects. In the presentation an overview of the current state of the art will be given. The application of the available prospection techniques will be presented with examples, including archaeo-geophysical surveys done along the power lines SuedLink and SuedOstLink in Germany. An essential point in the presentation of the results arises from the interdisciplinary cooperation between geophysics and archaeology. A deeper understanding from the point of view of the user, in this case archaeology, is necessary to properly evaluate the geophysical data in terms of their archaeological significance.