Siliba: Building the Geological Chert Lithoteque

Collections of lithic materials constitute a valuable heritage, since collect and exhibit raw materials used in prehistory and represent a powerful tool of knowledge of human civilizations. In this perspective and in order to reach these objectives, the Department of Earth and Geoenvironmental Sciences of the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy) is building a lithotheque of about 1200 pieces of geological and archaeological cherts, both from outcrops, sites and mines, collected in the Gargano Promontory since the late 80’s of the last century by the archaeological team of Siena University (Basili et al., 1995). The geological section is now the result of an expanded collecting of primary and secondary cherts across Italy (Apulia, Basilicata, Sicily), Croatia, Serbia, Switzerland and Iraqi Kurdistan, belonging to formations from the Cretaceous to the Quaternary Period. Cherts are stored in suitable containers and the most representative samples are exposed in the Earth Sciences Museum of the University of Bari Aldo Moro. Furthermore, the lithoteque boasts a dedicated laboratory which includes optical microscopes, a glossmeter and a spectrophotocolorimeter. Almost all the samples were described according to the non-destructive multiparametric protocol for chert investigation (NM-PCI), providing a modular dataset of binary, ordinal and continuous variables which integrates petrographical, micropaleontological, chemical and physical data (Delluniversità et al., 2019). Such results were summarized in suitable reports which additionally display the geographic coordinates of all the sampling points, after processed by GIS software. All the photographic documentation and the produced data are included in a digital database, which will be soon online. The involvement in an Italian-French project (GALILEO 2019) aimed at identifying the chert sources between Tyrrhenian and Adriatic and harmonizing the methodological approaches for the study of chert. The promotion of the lithotheque in the last years was guaranteed by dissemination activities, such as the museum route “Dalla roccia al manufatto” created in 2018 at the Earth Sciences Museum of the same University, included an exhibition of the most significant SiLiBA samples and also an interactive laboratory of experimental archaeology.