The Neolithic greenstone industry from Valgrana/Tetto Chiappello (Cuneo Province, Northwestern Italy); A combined archaeometric and archaeological study

[Display omitted] •Mineral markers prove the raw materials originated from both the Monviso and Voltri.•This dual supply, guaranteed by retrieval and exchanges, is hardly found elsewhere.•Raw materials provisioning exploited both secondary sources and primary outcrops.•As a sedentary site, only initial manufacture was performed here, to be finished elsewhere.•Due to location, Valgrana was a strategic site in the greenstone economy & circulation. The greenstone industry of Valgrana/Tetto Chiappello was studied with an archaeo-typological and mineral/petrographic approach (functional study, XRPD, polarized light microscopy and SEM-EDS), to infer the provenance of the raw materials and the role of this site in the general greenstone circulation during Neolithic. Most artifacts (mainly cutting-edge tools) are made of sensu stricto greenstones (≈ 80%), especially mixed Na-pyroxenite and eclogite in roughly equal amounts. The abundance of roughouts and broken tools, with evident use-wear traces, suggests that these implements were possibly used even before (or sometimes without) pre-shaping. Based on mineralogical and morphological ‘markers’, a dual mechanism of raw materials supplying was hypothesized for Valgrana: most tools were retrieved from the closer areas of the southern Monviso ‘massif’ (few dozens of km far, as the crow flies), though a subordinate supply channel was probably represented by commercial trades with other settlements, thus allowing the stocking of raw materials and/or artifacts also from the more distant Voltri ‘massif’ (70-to-80 km far). For what concerns the provisioning mode, a ‘secondary high-ground supplying’ mainly operated in Valgrana, according to which the raw materials were retrieved from greenstone boulders dismantled by erosion and rolled down along the Monviso ‘massif’ mountainsides; however, it cannot be excluded that direct extraction from primary outcrops may also have occurred. In the operative chain, Valgrana can be identified as a subordinate sedentary ‘satellite site’, in which specialized workers took care of raw materials gathering and preliminary tool processing – to be continued and concluded elsewhere.