Open Archaeology 2020; 6: 107–123 Pasquale Acquafredda*, Felice Larocca, Antonella Minelli, Mauro Pallara, Francesca Micheletti Petroarcheometric Analysis on Obsidian Artefacts Found Within Some Neolithic – Eneolithic Period Caves of Southern Italy https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2020-0110 Received January 16, 2020; accepted May 15, 2020 Abstract: In the last twenty years, obsidian artefacts have been found in important and often extensive karst cavities in Southern Italy: three located in Calabria (Grotta della Monaca, and Grotta del Tesauro, in Sant’Agata di Esaro, Cosenza; Grotta Pietra Sant’Angelo in San Lorenzo Bellizzi, Cosenza), one in Puglia (Grotta di Santa Barbara in Polignano a Mare, Bari) and another in Campania (Grotta di Polla, Salerno). All these sites, that have returned a total of 151 obsidian tools, were connected to human frequentation of the underground environments that occurred during the Holocene, which can be precisely located in the vast period between the Neolithic and the Eneolithic (6 th –4 th millennium BC). They are mainly blades and bladelets, but also burins together with scrapers and cores, generally of small dimensions. SEM-EDS and WD-XRF absolutely non-destructive analyses carried out on these items have shown that all samples have a source area in the obsidian outcrops of the island of Lipari (Messina, Italy). These data confirm that the Aeolian island of Lipari furnished the privileged obsidian extraction outcrops for most of the Neolithic and Eneolithic archaeological sites of Southern Italy. Keywords: obsidian provenance, prehistoric caves, Southern Italy, SEM-EDS, WD-XRF, non-destructive analyses 1 Introduction Source determination of obsidians artefacts is one of the main targets of petroarchaeometric research; it has been developed since the 1930s through partially destructive or absolutely non-destructive analytical Original Study Article note: This article is a part of Special Issue ‘The Black Gold That Came from the Sea. Advances in the Studies of Obsidian Sources and Artifacts of the Central Mediterranean Area’, edited by Franco Italiano, Franco Foresta Martin & Maria Clara Martinelli. *Corresponding author: Pasquale Acquafredda, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e Geoambientali, via Orabona 4, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy; Centro Interdipartimentale, Laboratorio di Ricerca per la Diagnostica dei Beni Culturali, via Orabona 4, Bari 70125, Italy, E-mail: pasquale.acquafredda@uniba.it Mauro Pallara, Francesca Micheletti, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e Geoambientali, via Orabona 4, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy Felice Larocca, Centro Regionale di Speleologia “Enzo dei Medici” – Commissione di ricerca per l’Archeologia delle Grotte, via Lucania 3, 87070 Roseto Capo Spulico (CS), Italy; Centro di ricerca speleo-archeologica – Laboratorio di Paletnologia, via Pisani 26, 87010 Sant’Agata di Esaro (CS), Italy Antonella Minelli, Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche, Sociali e della Formazione, via De Sanctis, Università del Molise, Campobasso, Italy Open Access. © 2020 Pasquale Acquafredda et al., published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License.