The polished stone tools of the Sant'Anna Neolithic site (southern Italy).

The Sant'Anna site is located at the south-west suburb area of Oria (Brindisi province) in correspondence of the foot of a consolidated dune of the lower Pleistocene, which overlies upper Pliocene - lower Pleistocene biogenic detritic limestones and clayey-marls. The eolian deposit forms a some kilometres long watershed that strongly influences the landscape and the network of the streams. The site was settled during to distinct phases, namely the early middle Neolithic and the passage from the late Neolithic to the Copper Age. During the oldest phase (second half of VI millennium BC) at Sant'Anna were been manufactured raw materials, local or not, such as clays, stones, bones, hides and woods, to product objects intended to the whole southern Italy. Elegant painted and carved bowels as well as very good workmanship obsidian or chert blades had been found together with bone and polished stone tools. The lithic artifacts were classified on the strength of shape and presumed use in the following categories: querns and (handstone) grinders, axes, hatchets, polishing stones, pestles, percussors and stone ornaments. These polished stone tools had been used for various manufactory activities such as the grinding of grain and the milling of the pigments (querns, grinders and pestles), the cutting and working of woods (axes and hatchets), the chipper of stones (percussors), and the treatment of vascular surfaces (polishing stones). During the second phase of settlement (second half of V millennium BC), Sant'Anna had been used presumably as residential site. Also in this period were found polished stone tools (querns, grinders and polishing stones). On the base of the lithological types, two groups of polished stone tools can be distinguish. The former consists of querns and (handstone) grinders made of calcarenites and calcirudites and, subordinately, sandstones. The artifacts of calcarenites and calcirudites had been made using the local upper Pliocene - lower Pleistocene marine deposits and especially the so called "carparo", whereas the sandstones used to made some grinders could coming from the adjacent Ionian - Bradanic area. All these rock materials are porous and relatively light. The tolls belonging to the second group consists of axes, hatchets, polishing stones, pestles, and percussors were mainly made of stones of allochthonous provenances, such as quarzites, quartz arenites, siliceous limestones, gabbros. An exception is a pestles referable to the middle Neolithic made of a limestone probably coming from Cretaceous beds cropping out not so far from Sant'Anna site. The majority of the types belonging to the second group are disc shaped, whereas some of which are flaky, and appear come from fluvial or littoral gravels. They are very hard and present excellent mechanical characteristics, which corroborate a hypothesis of elaborate selection of lithic materials practiced by the Neolithic peoples. To determine the provenance of the stones a number of areas source can be consider. First of all, the Basilicata region along which quarzites, siliceous limestones, jaspers and many other lithotypes are present within gravel deposits generated during the Pleistocene by the dismantling of the Apennine Chain. Nevertheless, about some tools, different origins must be examined. As an example, for an axe made of a metasomatized gabbros, the potential source areas of the Sila massif in northern Calabria and the coast of the Gargano promontory of the northern Apulia will be evaluated. Finally, a bead chain of crystalline calcite, (middle Neolithic), could be made with local karst cave accretion or sparite fractures filling.