Giovanni Canestrini and the Bronze Age potsherds from Terramare modenesi at the Anthropology Museum of the University of Padua

The paper presents an archaeological and documentary study of a collection of forty Bronze Age potsherds from the terramare sites of Modena province, preserved within the Anthropology Museum of the University of Padua since the 19th century. Within a research project aimed at cataloguing the palethnological collection of the Museum, a rereading of the Catalogue of Prehistoric Objects, attributed to Giovanni Canestrini and written since 1879, was performed. The integrated reading of the document with the collection itself and other sources allows to date the entrance in the museum of these potsherds to the years of scientific activity of Canestrini and in all likelihood to the scholar himself. Canestrini arrived in Padua in 1869 and since 1878-79 he started teaching Anthropology, contributing in a substantial way to the birth of both the Zoological and the Anthropological museums. In the first part of the paper the catalogue is presented. The hand-written document lists a series of prehistoric and protohistoric artefacts and zoo-archaeological remains, from contexts of Italy (among this group, the objects from Modena terramare are listed) and from Egypt. In the second part, an archaeological study of the potsherds is presented. The small collection can be dated from Middle Bronze Age 2 to Recent Bronze Age - with some vessels of a long-lasting shape that could also be referred to earlier Bronze Age phases -, through the comparisons with coeval published materials. In the third and final part, a correlated research on the history of excavations of Bronze Age Modena sites until 1900 is proposed. This research was carried on in order to narrow down the list of the possible provenance sites to the ones that were already known during Canestrini’s working years, until its death. A list of 35 Bronze Age sites has been realized. Among these, as a work hypothesis, the sites where Canestrini actually worked are pointed at as the most probable provenance sites for the potsherds from Modena terramare preserved within the palethnological collection of the Anthropology Museum of Padua University. Other possible explanations for the presence of these artefacts in the collection cannot be excluded thus far.