Donne nuragiche a Hala Sultan Tekke, Cipro: alcune riflessioni sulla Sardegna e il mondo miceneo-levantino alla fine del II millennio a.C.

This paper aims at investigating a group of handmade burnished pottery found in the recent excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke, an important Late Bronze Age harbor situated near modern Larnaca. The evidence of Hala Sultan Tekke contributes to a general reassessment of the probably Nuragic pottery found in other sites of Cyprus in the same chronological context. The first editors have attributed to a Sardinian origin these objects, which includes a group of shallow cups with an internal groove below the rim. This attribution is closely confirmed by the results of FTIR and NAA analyses, which confirm the provenance of the black handmade pottery at Hala Sultan Tekke from Sardinia. The main purpose of the paper is to provide primary information about the place and the context where this pottery was found. The provenance from a specific area of the LBA settlement invites us to reconstruct a secondary cemetery where probably immigrants and foreign people buried and carried out rituals. A further investigation involves the function of this pottery as tableware and cooking vessels, focusing more in general on the culinary tradition related to LBA coastal Levant. The pottery assemblage from Hala Sultan Tekke is an exceptional document for the reconstructing the long-distance relationships between Sardinia, Western Mediterranean and Cyprus during the 13th century BC. A further investigation arises roles and symbolic meanings attributed to the Sardinian handmade pottery at Hala Sultan Tekke. The evidence of the funerary Area A suggests to reconstruct meal practices carried out by women, maybe of Sardinian origin, who used cooking pots and tableware imported from Wetern Mediterranean.