# Evaluating the potential of in-depth chrono-cultural and functional analysis of pottery in European cave archaeology: a case study from the prehistoric Grotte Di Sant’angelo Cave Complex (Cassano allo Ionio – Calabria, Italy)

## TL;DR

This study explores how analyzing ancient pottery in a southern Italian cave can reveal insights into prehistoric human activity and cave use.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a combined chronological and functional analysis approach for prehistoric pottery in cave archaeology.

## Key findings

- Pottery from the 4th millennium BCE was analyzed for its chronological placement and function.
- Use-related morphological properties and preserved organic residues were examined to infer pottery use.
- The study proposes hypotheses about the meaning and use of different pottery shapes in specific contexts.

## Abstract

This paper evaluates the potential of in-depth chronological and functional analysis of prehistoric pottery (4th millennium BCE) from the Grotte di Sant’Angelo Cave Complex, located in the municipality of Cassano allo Ionio (Calabria, Southern Italy). The underground system, formed by sulfuric acid speleogenesis, features a floor scattered with depressions, holes, and fractures of different depths hosting archaeological materials. A number of these contexts in the so-called ‘Trivio’ area, excavated in 2017 and reported on here, provide an excellent opportunity to pioneer a combined archaeological and scientific contextual approach to unravelling the use of pottery in the Grotte di Sant’Angelo Cave Complex through time. The approach chosen first establishes the chronology of pots through typological comparisons with sites offering key stratigraphic sequences for prehistoric material culture present in the Italian peninsula and islands. Next, a functional study is presented that focusses on the use-related morphological properties of the pots, their performance characteristics, and preserved organic residues. Based on presentation and evaluation of the resulting data, the authors then proceed to propose hypotheses on the use and meaning of the various pottery shapes present in individual contexts from the Trivio zone cave floor contexts. At a more general level, the aim of the authors is to show how a contextual approach, combining several research tools for pottery analysis can make an important contribution to the toolbox of scholars working in European cave archaeology, thereby increasing the discipline’s potential of resolving theoretically informed questions about human-cave entanglements in later prehistory.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12520-025-02332-1.