Dr. Marie Usadel
History

Chronologies of the Central Mediterranean. 
Re-introducing Nuragic Sardinia to the wider debate.

My project targets the Middle to Late Bronze Age chronology in Sardinia that covers the so-called Nuragic phenomenon, approximately between the 18th and the 11th century BC.
 

The general periodization of Sardinian Prehistory derives from relative chronologies developed for continental Italy and Europe which does not always correlate with Sardinia’s (peculiar) archaeological features. Moreover, the refining of those chronologies through absolute dates based on radiocarbon analyses is still only rarely addressed. The main reasons for this can be summarized as a lack of samples from stratified excavation contexts, the lack of accessible information about those contexts and a poor publication standard regarding original data.

With my project I want to target this research gap and publish a set of radiocarbon dates from stratified excavation contexts. The importance of these dates builds on the accessibility of information about the Nuragic settlement site of Grutt’i Acqua (Crisionis) that generated the samples and the integration of absolute dates with stratigraphic and typological sequences. For making a valuable contribution to the wider debate and advance Nuragic archaeology I want to use the Gateway Fellowship to expand my methodological repertoire to include the processing, implementation and publishing of radiocarbon dates. Apart from this it is of great importance to understand the development of Italian and Sardinian chronologies to plan future steps in this research environment. 

A research stay at Nottingham University will enable me to focus on the implementation of this project and learn from experienced international researchers in the field of mediterranean prehistory. More than the content of any library it is the experience in Italian research traditions and chronological studies that is of upmost importance to me at this stage of my career.