Late-Copper-Age decorated bowls from the Trieste Karst (north-eastern Italy): what can typology, technology and non-destructive chemical analyses tell us on local vs. foreign production, exchange systems and human mobility patterns?

Twenty-two Late-Copper-Age decorated cross-footed bowls from the Trieste Karst (north-eastern Italy) and the Deschmann's pile dwellings (Ljubljansko barje, Slovenia), recently investigated using X-ray computed microtomography (microCT), have been studied and chemically analysed using non-destructive prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA). The main aim of our research was to determine whether the cross-footed bowls found in the Trieste Karst were locally produced or if they might have been imported from central Slovenia or even from more distant regions. The PGAA results, combined with the microCT ones, have shown that only 1 bowl from the Karst might have been imported from Ljubljansko barje, while other 4 Karst vessels were most probably imported but not from central Slovenia. In more detail, K2O contents, higher than values reported from local Karst and Slovenian soils, have been recorded in two of these Italian bowls. The Karst bowls represent, according to their morphology and rich ornamentation manly consisting of cord impressions, a special variant of cross-footed bowls with relevant typological comparisons in the Carpathian basin (Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic). A possible central European origin of some Karst bowls would be in agreement with high K2O soil contents in some areas of the Czech Republic. Cross-footed bowls from the Trieste Karst might be considered as evidence of long distance connections, movements of ideas, artefacts and/or even movements of people, triggered by large-scale migrations from the north Pontic steppe region to central Europe, revealed by recent genetic studies.