STAZIONE DELL'ANTICA ET(?) DEL BRONZO AD OSTIANO(CREMONA),LOCALIT(?)SAN SALVATORE Nota preliminare sulla campagna dell'agosto 1980

The Early Bronze Age settlement at Ostiano S.Salvatore is located on afluvial terrace at the confluence of the rivers Oglio and Mella.The site produced evidenceof an archaeological layer,pits and post holes.The prehistoric structures yielded pottery and flint artefacts attributable to a local aspectof the Polada Culture,while no Middle Bronze Age potsherds or handles,arise ad ascia forinstance,have been found so far.The chronological sequence of the pits seems to be asfollows:5,3,Ⅳ,Ⅰ,Ⅱ and Ⅲ.Pits 1 and 4 might be contemporary to each other.Theyonly produced a small amount of potsherds.Better results will be available when thestudy of all the structures will be completed.The faunal remains show that a well balanced economy was practised at the site.Cattle,sheep/goat and pig,in descending order,were the animals killed for meat.A scarcehunting activity is attested by red deer and roe deer bones.These data slightly differfrom those from the other Po Plain EBA sites from where there is evidence of a prevailingpig economy.Cereals were also cultivated as revealed by the presence of burnt seeds andsickle blades made from flint.People at Ostiano S.Salvatore also collected wild plants.A few pieces of daub indicate that the buts had wooden and clay wails.The greatvariety of vessels produced by the pits might suggest that pottery was locally made.Onthe contrary the flint artefacts are very rare,being composed of 28 tools only.The bronzeimplements are extremely scarce.We actually do not know whether this is due to thedistance of the site from the ore veins or to the various activities practised at differentsites complementary to each other.The EBA settlement closed to S.Salvatore is Cella Dati which also produced a few MBAsherds.