Between a rock, a gully, and a hard place : archaeological prospection of Metal Age remains in the uplands of the Raganello Basin (Calabria, Italy)

This paper discusses the challenges of archaeological prospection in two common situations in Mediterranean mountain landscapes: rock debris slopes and alluvial basins. Burial by subsequent rockfall episodes provides favourable preservation circumstances on debris slopes, but hinders the detection of archaeological remains. Erosive landscape zones are the arenas of multiple depositional and post-depositional processes which may be difficult to recognize in surface artefact distribution data and geophysical datasets. We present case studies from recently concluded research on the formation processes and detection potential of small Metal Age artefact scatters in such situations in the Raganello basin of Calabria (southern Italy). We demonstrate how detailed interdisciplinary work on these kinds of small-scale archaeological traces can reveal unexpected temporal and spatial dimensions of past human activity.