Ritual and Embedded Means of Economic Control
Nuragic Sanctuaries - Symbols, Ritual and the Management of Power in Prehistoric Sardinia - Nicola Ialongo
Nicola Ialongo [+]
University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Nicola Ialongo is Research Assistant in the Department of Sciences of Antiquity, at “Sapienza” University of Rome. Previously coordinating fieldwork within the Bonorva archaeological project (SS, Sardinia; concluded in 2008), he currently collaborates to the excavations at the Bronze Age village at Broglio di Trebisacce (CS, Calabria) and at the village and cult place at Monte Cimino (VT, Latium). His research and publications currently focus on Nuragic archaeology and on alternative approaches to the study of prehistoric weight measures.
Description
The question of “wealth control”, in relation to the steady flow of metal offerings in sanctuaries, is developed in this chapter. The question is empirically tackled by attempting an approximate evaluation of the quantity of metal that was possibly deposed in cultic contexts, in a given time unit. The resulting framework is discussed against large-scale, demand-based economic models that were often proposed for Bronze Age Europe by different authors. The question of local-scale, patron-client economic models is then put into perspective.