- Matteo Milletti –
During the Middle and Recent Bronze Age, ceramic development shows the existence
of established relationships with the peninsula, and especially with some areas of the
future northern Etruria. Local production, in fact, adopts some styles and vase forms and
decorative motifs of Protoappenninic tradition, a cultural facies that characterizes, among
others, some coastal areas of northern Tuscany and, to a lesser extent, was borrowed from
the facies of peninsular Grotta Nuova (Camps 1979, 1988; Lanfranchi 1992; Atzeni,
Depalmas 2006; Lorenzi 2007; Pêche-Quilichini 2012). The relations of southern Corsican
ceramic production, and particularly of the Apazzu-Castidetta-Cucuruzzu facies, are yet to
be deepened with that of northern Sardinia (Pêche-Quilichini 2010c). The affi nity and
contacts of the south of the island with neighboring Sardinia are indeed evident both
in the articulation of social structures, and in similar architectural experiences, so as to
suggest an original common cultural substratum. In this regard, the information handed
down by Pliny (NH 3.7.85) is suggestive: he notes the presence in Gallura, during the
Roman period, of the population of Corsi (Mastino, Spanu, Zucca 2005).
BETWEEN THE NINTH AND EIGHTH CENTURIES BC:
THE STRENGTHENING OF CONTACTS WITH
MIDDLE-TYRRHENIAN ETRURIAOn the threshold of the Iron Age (Lanfranchi, Weiss 1975; Lanfranchi, Weiss 1997;
Cesari 2010), the view of the trade and relationships with the peninsula and in particular
of Etruria’s relations with Corsica, vital since the previous centuries, is well established
in its essential features. By the end of the Bronze Age, Corsica had entered a period of
profound economic and social restructuring, evidenced by a progressive failure of the
settlement system of previous centuries, centered in the southern sector in the so-called
castelli (Lanfranchi 2006), or fortifi ed villages, often surrounded by Cyclopean walls.
Located on hills and naturally protected granite chaos areas or on sites of low defensive
potential but strategically positioned to exploit patterns of signifi cant resources, these
settlements are generally characterized by the presence, in a dominant position, of at
least one tower (torra) and a monument, consisting of several buildings located close
to the latter, while the rest of the village was spread over neighboring terraces, often
extended or regularized by artifi cially imposing walls of the substructure, with housing
units obtained by integrating the natural ledges of bedrock or by adapting caves and rock
shelters for this purpose. To these settlements, some of which continue to be populated,
it is appropriate to add new fi nds, such as Cuciurpula (Pêche-Quilichini 2010a, 2010b;
Pêche-Quilichini et al. 2012; Milletti et al. 2011), Cozza Torta in the south (Milanini
2012), or E. Mizane in the north of the island (Antolini 2012), which are arranged along
the main routes of transhumance and the routes linking the interior and the coast. The
transition to a system of “scattered” settlements, with more widespread occupation of the
territory, is paired with a defi nite openness to contacts with the future historical territories
of Etruria. Contributing to the strengthening of ties between the two areas are common
experiences related to metallurgy, in the context of a general movement of materials and
ideas involving the large islands of Tyrrhenian and Middle-Tyrrhenian Etruria (Milletti
2012a). Although the Corsican bronze-working of the centuries around the turn of the
fi rst millennium bc is not comparable to that of the Nuragic culture or the territories of
northern Etruria, whether in volume of production or for the originality of the models,
nonetheless, the discovery of a number of molds for metal casting (Fig. 13.2) seems to