Frattesina

Research History

The settlement of Frattesina, located southeast of the modern town of Fratta Polesine (Province of Rovigo), was discovered in 1967 by members of the Centro Polesano di Studi Storici Archeologici ed Etnografici (C.P.S.S.A.E.) of Rovigo, who published the first reports of the site in the journal Padusa.

The principal investigations at the site were directed by Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri, who conducted eleven excavation campaigns between 1974 and 1989 on behalf of the then Archaeological Superintendency of Veneto. During the same period, thanks to the work of Superintendency officers Maurizia De Min and Luciano Salzani, additional highly significant surface finds were recorded, most notably four founder’s hoards. Furthermore, the two cemeteries associated with the settlement—Fondo Zanotto and Narde—were investigated through several excavation campaigns.

From 2013 onward, surface surveys and field investigations resumed within the settlement area under the auspices of the Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape Superintendency for the Provinces of Verona, Rovigo and Vicenza, the C.P.S.S.A.E. of Rovigo, and, since 2019, the Chair of Prehistory and Protohistory at Sapienza University of Rome. Excavations were resumed in 2022 under the direction of Andrea Cardarelli (Sapienza University of Rome) and Paolo Bellintani (C.P.S.S.A.E., Rovigo).

The results of research at Frattesina were comprehensively presented in the 2019 volume Frattesina: un centro internazionale di produzione e di scambio nella tarda età del bronzo del Veneto (“Frattesina: An International Centre of Production and Exchange in the Late Bronze Age of Veneto”), edited by Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri, Paolo Bellintani, and Claudio Giardino and published by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. They also formed the focus of the international conference Frattesina 50 anni dopo. Il Delta del Po tra Europa e Mediterraneo nei secoli attorno al 1000 a.C. (“Frattesina Fifty Years Later: The Po Delta between Europe and the Mediterranean around 1000 BC”), held in 2018 at the Museo dei Grandi Fiumi. The conference proceedings were subsequently published in the 2020 and 2021 volumes of Padusa, the journal of the C.P.S.S.A.E. of Rovigo.

Artefacts recovered from the settlement and cemeteries of Frattesina are currently housed and exhibited at the Museo dei Grandi Fiumi and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Fratta Polesine.

Settlement Characteristics and Environmental Setting

Frattesina was a large protohistoric settlement extending over more than 20 hectares. It stretched for approximately 1 km along a west–east axis on the right bank of the Po di Adria, the principal branch of the Po River during the Bronze Age, while its width varied between 100 and 200 m along the north–south axis.

Surface surveys, aerial-photograph interpretation, and coring investigations indicate that the settlement occupied a natural alluvial levee elevated approximately one metre above the surrounding contemporary ground surface. Evidence has also been identified for a network of roughly orthogonal canals or ditches aligned along west–east and north–south axes and connected to the ancient Po channel. These features subdivided the settlement into distinct blocks or sectors.

To date, excavation has revealed three residential structures ranging in size from approximately 40 to 80 m². The close association between domestic areas and craft-production spaces appears to have been a recurrent feature of the settlement. Excavations ongoing since 2022 have uncovered, in close proximity to dwellings, both a bronze hoard and a kiln that was probably used for the production of raw glass.

Chronology and Cultural Framework

On the basis of typological analyses of ceramic assemblages recovered from both surface collections and excavations, together with a number of radiometric dates, four occupational phases have been proposed for the settlement.

The site was probably founded during an advanced stage of the Recent Bronze Age (Phase 1), approximately in the first half of the twelfth century BC. Its period of greatest prosperity occurred during the early and developed stages of the Final Bronze Age (Phase 2), corresponding roughly to the second half of the twelfth and the eleventh centuries BC.

From the perspective of material culture, this phase can be attributed to the Protovillanovan archaeological facies and is characterised by a remarkable expansion of craft activities based on both local and exotic raw materials.

During the tenth century BC (Phase 3), corresponding to the final stage of the Final Bronze Age and the beginning of the Early Iron Age, production activities contracted, particularly those connected with exchange networks extending into the Aegean and Levantine worlds.

Evidence for a fourth occupational phase (Phase 4), presumably still within the Early Iron Age, is sparse and discontinuous.