L’Italia delle origini in camicia nera: ricerche e studi di archeologia preistorica negli anni del ventennio fascista

This paper aims at reconstructing the history of the Italian Prehistoric and Protohistoric archaeology in the period from 1922 to 1945. The main aspect is the relationship system, in terms of institutional and scientific dimension, between some scholars and the official political activity promoted by the fascist government. An important role has played by Ugo Rellini, professor of Prehistory at University of Rome, and one of the most fresh and innovative researcher, who contributed to introduce a wider scientific and interdisciplinary perspective in the study of the later Prehistory in Italy. A further aspect is the methodological dimension of the Prehistoric studies in Italy when a new attention to the stratigraphy and a specific focus on Natural Sciences have been introduced. The paper analyses the role played by some scholars who are strictly connected with the direction of the Fascist National Party and, in some cases, to Mussolini too. In this perspective, we are able to reconstruct specific close links between the foreign policy promoted by Fascism in the Mediterranean Sea and selected research projects on the Prehistory of Malta and Anatolia. Despite this wide and impressive scientific activity mostly related to the diffusion of a new idea of Prehistory, the role of the discipline was smaller than in German under the Nazi government, nevertheless it was not less interesting and worth to be investigated. The final part of this research focuses on the systematic use of Prehistory by some Italian scholars, after the Racist ideology had become a part of the State Policy of Mussolini Government since 1938.