Gaudo culture

Gaudo culture
HorizonChalcolithic
Geographical rangeSouth Italy
Period3150-2300 BC
Type siteSpina-Gaudo necropolis
Preceded byNeolithic Italy
Followed byBell Beaker culture
An example of a Gaudo Culture tomb, made up of an access shaft with antechamber, from which branch off two burial chambers, containing ceremonial ceramics like the one pictured above, and human skeletons bound up in the fetal position.

The Gaudo Culture is an Eneolithic culture from Southern Italy, primarily in the region of Campania, active at the end of the 4th millennium BC, whose typesite necropolis is located near Paestum, not far from the mouth of the river Sele.[1] Its name comes from the Spina-Gaudo necropolis.

Objects of this culture are known and have been recovered since Antiquity. During the 5th century BC and/or the 4th century BC, for example, Greek settlers deposited daggers made of flint probably from graves in an ancient sanctuary at the site of Paestum.[2] In the 18th century, objects were also recovered by scholars. For example, a flint dagger and a vase were brought from Italy to England by William Hamilton and are now in the British Museum.[3]

  1. ^ Bailo ModestiI G., Salerno A. (Eds), 1998, Pontecagnano II, 5. La necropoli eneolitica, L'età del Rame in Campania nei villaggi dei morti, Annali dell'Istituto Orientale di Napoli, sezione di Archeologia e Storia Antica, quad. n. 11, Napoli
  2. ^ Aurigemma S., Spinazzola V., Maiuri A., 1986, I primi scavi di Paestum (1907-1939), Ente per le antichità e i monumenti della provincia di Salerno, Salerno
  3. ^ Barfield L. H., 1985, Sir William Hamilton’s Chalcolithic Collection, in Swaddling J., Papers of the Sixth British Museum Classical symposium 1983, p. 229-233