P14
The ancestors’ house
The presence of the collective graves containing ossuary marks the passage from Neolithic to
Copper Age. In the graves the human rests are in secondary deposition, the bones do not concern
complete skeletons and they often lack several anatomic elements. It is not a common tomb but a
sanctuary where the ancestors’ remains were venerated,
The monumental tomb of Europa Street was widely excavated; at the bottom, there was a
rectangular chamber with floor. A masonry composed of sandstone slabs linked with clay delimited
the space of this room. The tomb was violated in ancient times: the grave goods consisted of
copper objects of which the archaeologists have found some tiny fragments (showcase n.6/n. 1.3). A
low mound elevated on a wooden structure that covered the funerary chamber. Simultaneously, a
pyriform stone at the top of the mound marked the presence of the grave.
The bones belonged to four adults and six children or infants. The only grave good is a bone awl
(showcase n.6/n. 1.1).
Because of the dating, it seems that the human remains selected for this mould came from older
inhumation tombs that go back to the Late Neolithic or Copper age. Differently, the radiometric
dating shows that the monumental structure and the deposition of the bones date back to the Copper
Age (IIIrd millennium B.C)
Reconstructive hypothesis of the Copper Age monumental grave
Grave goods from the T. Bubbio Road Copper Age grave