Strategie di sfruttamento delle risorse minerarie in Italia centro-meridionale tra VI e II millennio a.C. Utensili, tecniche estrattive e gestione dei lavori nel sottosuolo.

Despite significant advances in mining archaeology, the reconstruction of prehistoric mining technologies and the organisation of mining activities still pose several critical issues, particularly in central and southern Italy. Mining sites provide an exceptional context for investigating the relationships between geological resources, technical knowledge, tool production and labour organization. However, these aspects have generally been examined as isolated case studies and rarely integrated into a comprehensive interpretative framework. This research argues that prehistoric mining in central and southern Italy between the 6th and 2nd millennia BCE can be understood through the strategies used to exploit mineral resources. Rather than providing a descriptive account of individual mining sites, the study examines the technical and organisational processes underlying prehistoric mining activities. Within this framework, mining tools are considered the primary interpretative key for understanding the operational practices of prehistoric miners and the organisation of underground work. The analysis of the mining toolkit has made it possible to reconstruct raw material procurement strategies, tool design and manufacturing processes, patterns of use during extraction, practices of maintenance and secondary use. Mines are therefore interpreted as complex production systems in which geological resources, tools, technological knowledge and labour organisation are closely interconnected. The dissertation follows a progressive structure, moving from the definition of a theoretical and methodological framework to a comparative discussion of the results. The first section critically reviews the development of mining archaeology as a scientific discipline and examines the evolution of mineral resource exploitation from the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age within a European perspective, while also incorporating selected extra-European case studies, thereby placing the Italian evidence within a broader diachronic and supra-regional framework. On this basis, a critical reassessment of the ergology of prehistoric miners is undertaken, highlighting the limitations of traditional typological classifications and proposing a new interpretation of mining tools as integral elements of the operational sequence of the extraction process rather than as isolated categories of artefacts. This approach provides the theoretical foundation for the development of an original methodology integrating morphometric, technological, archaeometric and experimental analyses for the systematic study of mining tools and, through them, the reconstruction of prehistoric extraction processes. The proposed methodology was tested on four of the most significant mining districts in central and southern Italy: the Gargano flint mines, the cinnabar mining evidence from Tuscany, including Monte Amiata and Poggio Spaccasasso, and the copper mining site of Poggio Malinverno in the Tolfa Mountains. The comparison of these case studies made it possible to investigate the exploitation of different mineral resources and to assess how geological conditions influenced raw material selection, tool manufacture and use, as well as the organisation of mining activities. The analyses demonstrate that tool production followed recurrent technological principles and was based on the deliberate selection of raw materials according to their physical and mechanical properties. The multidisciplinary approach adopted in this research enabled the characterisation of the lithotypes employed, the reconstruction of manufacturing sequences through experimental archaeology, the interpretation of macroscopic use-wear traces preserved on tool surfaces, and the identification of systematic maintenance and reuse practices. Consequently, the study of the mining toolkit proved fundamental for reconstructing extraction strategies, contextualising mining evidence, identifying different technological traditions and assessing the degree of technical specialisation achieved by prehistoric mining communities. The comparative analysis of the four case studies constitutes the core of this research. Although they relate to different mineral resources and span a broad chronological range, the analysed assemblages reveal the existence of shared technological principles based on the standardisation of manufacturing procedures, the rational selection of raw materials and the adaptation of tools to specific mining requirements. At the same time, significant differences emerge in response to the geological characteristics of individual deposits, reflecting the development of local technological traditions within a broader body of shared knowledge. The principal contribution of this dissertation is that it defines a new interpretative model that moves beyond traditional approaches centred primarily on the description of mining structures or the typological classification of tools. Taken together, the results show that central and southern Italy played a main role in the development of extractive technologies between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, and that the principal mining districts of the Italian peninsula participated in the technological innovations that characterised the wider European and Mediterranean context. At the same time, the methodology developed here provides a replicable analytical framework for the investigation of other mining assemblages, demonstrating that the integrated study of mining tools represents a powerful means of reconstructing resource exploitation strategies, labour organisation and the transmission of technical knowledge among pre- and protohistoric communities.