Neolithic and Copper Age polished stone axes in the Caput Adriae: synthesis of a long-term interdisciplinary project

The report “Greenstone” shaft-hole axes of NE Italy, Slovenia, Croatia: a new research project presented at the 39th IIPP Scientific Conference dedicated to raw materials and exchanges in Italian prehistory, held in Firenze in 2004, reviewed the situation of the studies on this class of artefacts and presented an agenda for the future. Since then an interdisciplinary team has worked mainly on the following research lines: archaeometric analyses of artefacts – shaft-hole axes and axe blades, for programmatic reasons – found in different sites of Caput Adriae, field surveys, sampling and analyses of geological formations, planned to identify the origin of the different raw materials used to make tools different in typology and, presumably, chronology. This goal has been achieved and the significant increase in data has been used to try to reconstruct the connections and the mechanisms of exchange active from the Neolithic to the beginning of the Bronze Age. The results of the long-term project are synthesized in this paper, which also evaluates their impact on the broader cultural panorama of late prehistory.