 presents this joint paper, you see the names of all the contributors, but I would like to thank you right now, even if only Philippa would be here, he's here, Andrea, Lizemarie and the Lord Knap, they could make it from Britain and Paolo Di Mattea, which is our geologist also, because he was very busy with some calling in central Sicily, he couldn't make it to come to the conference, but their contribution is very important in order to define the complete picture for what is the site of Casa Bastione. Casa Bastione is located in the center part of Sicily, it is placed on a terrace just at the foot of a sharp cliff and is limited to the south, the Paolo Lake Lagos Taylor, Claudia later on will talk about more on this, which has been drawn to the 1930s, which forms a very important feature. The site has been discovered for the first time by Luigi Benabobria, in the late 40s he was working at the El Mese necropolis excavation, with his help, with the workers who went around the area and he spotted this cliff with a series of graves, and he just mentioned that it was not possible to reach, because the cliff was too stiff. The site has been rediscovered in the year 2000, thanks to a small survey project financed by the municipality of Villa Rosa, we will be working on this terrace and collecting a lot of material that you see here, the chronology, going from the late Neolithic, going through the Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. The site has been abandoned and reoccupied during the late antique Early Middle Ages. Again, about this, Francesca Roduzzi will present a poster in the medieval section in the south today, where we will present some of the data, also from Casa Castiola. Then the site has been placed by the municipality of Villa Rosa, within a project financed by DC, we were able to get some money in order to acquire the land to the municipality owners, and that we had the first ecological excavation in here 2007. So far we have eight campaigns of ecological excavation, concentrated mainly in the late Copper Age, Early Bronze Age levels, but this last January we had the chance to make a core in the right middle of the site, and we had the opportunity to verify that the full deposit is about five meters before the bedrock, and it's all archaeological, so we hope that in the future we will have some test pits in other parts of the area where the late Copper Age, Early Bronze Age structures are not present in order to explore and investigate the older levels. This is just a picture of what is the landscape. This area was for a long time almost unknown in terms of archaeology, only Monteltesina was known again because the Pugibena Bobrea work in the area. This situation completely changed after 2004, the year 2000 when the small survey project was run, and then more or less constantly every year we had small parts of the survey going around the town. This is the territory, and this is what you have at the moment, all the names reported on the photos are archaeological sites, which goes from Priestory down to the medieval period. Just to give you some idea of the archaeology of this area, Realmezer of course did the main site, it will be inspired by the late 40s by Uribe Navobrea, the late 40s by Porso Montegrufo, which is a Greek site, a Greek archite site. Contrata Gaspa is a Roman necropolis dating to the 4th century AD, and of course then Canalotto is a very huge rock-cut village that is dating from the early Roman period down to the medieval period. Very shortly, what is the geological-geomorphological context of Casebastione? Casebastione is placed on the very north part of the Cattonecetta basin, a territory which is marked by terravecchia from conglomerates dating to the Trotone period, and mixed with the Evapolitic series, the Evapolitic series with the presence and surface of important resources, like rock salt, sulfur, chal, that are all present in the area. As I said, we started the first excavation in 2007, up to a few weeks ago, and I'm not going to much detail the archaeology of Casebastione, we published a few of the papers, the last one, the more important one on Origini, a few years ago, and then other preliminary notes on Tizialio and the story of Astoria. But I want to concentrate here on what are the analytical aspects of the scale of our project, run together with Filippo, and especially dedicating my attention to the geomorphological and geophysical analysis we have the opportunity to run in the site leading to Claudia, later on all the bio-chaeological aspects of the site. Next one, the first campaign we were able to get 21 photocabin dates, that would be analyzed also through the aid of the Bayesian technology analysis. Through the Bayesian analysis we can divide the 21 days in three clusters of dates that corresponds to a series of structures found, the first one. Root dating from the 2600 to 2300 is dated to the late Copper Age, are the Alfa and Ferriole, next one. Then is the first group of dates referring to HAT 1, which is the first part of Early Bronze Age dating from the 2200 until the 1900, Cal BC. The third one is related to HAT 2 and 3, that are two other structures dating to the middle late part of the Early Bronze Age, between the 1900 and 1700. At Casebacione is missing what has been called the fourth phases of the subdivision of the Lucho period. Next one, just to give you an idea of what is the Early Bronze Age, HAT 1. Here are some of the vessels we found. I want to show this picture only to quote the mention of the presence of large quantities of dog, which are preserving perfectly well all the imprints of reeds and posts. Tomorrow we will present a joint paper with other specialists on the team, and she will analyze more in detail these aspects. As for the late Copper Age, we were able to expose this context from a biopatter surface with post holes and a series of shallow pits all lined in clay. We were able to analyze part of the material culture, particularly thanks to Robert Teichelt, we were able to analyze all the obsidian coming from the site, and 95% of this, but only from this context, comes from Lipadi, which was respected, and only a very small point, and 5% comes from Contraleria. The main feature is this strange feature. All this firmness at the beginning, we were almost convinced that that was related to archeometallurgical activities. Also because, next one, we found a series of objects in the close proximity that looks like probably objects involving the metal production, or a mold, a series of possible crucibles. Also because we found certain similarities with metallurgical furnaces around the Mediterranean, especially in the European Peninsula, Zamboial, and a site in the central south of Spain. Since 2013, Andrea Dolfini joined the project. He took samples from the pits and sent to analyze to London and Guilano at the Brunei University of London, and of course there was no metallurgy at all. This was the big surprise for us, and big disappointment. All the samples taken from the pits, we have at least three or four pits involved in the same area, didn't give any presence of metal, of slugs, or whatever. The chemical mineralogical composition was quite similar to many others, where we are producing a lot of iron oxide, which is naturally present in the soil and in the clay. But despite this, we have also sent other samples to analyze, particularly two from the layers just in front of the so-called crucibles. At the moment I still understand what is being used. But these two samples have returned a very interesting chemical signature, a lot of titanium, aluminium, so we started to wonder what are these stuff, and we found that this could probably be a sample taken from the polymetallic nodules. There are geological formations typical of the Flesh Formation, created on the seabed and then emerged with the constitution of the Flesh. These are kind of bowls of metal containing manganese, a little quantity of copper or iron oxide, and in the smaller point is a lot of other type of metals. The important thing that this is not something that comes from the site or from the area, has to be taken there because the closest source of this material comes from at least 15 km. So this analysis, despite the fact that they denied, at least for the moment, the possibility to have a archaeometallogen or a casabacione, has opened a new perspective analyzing the context of the polymetallic nodules. And the next one, if we look at the raw material present in the area, we can realize this is something that we are working with Paolo Di Mattea, our geologist. Casabacione is the red circle in the middle, and if you see the presence of sulfur very close, the yellow squares, but also rock salt. So if you consider the main raw materials present in the area, which goes from iron oxide, basalt, these two places, this geological anomaly, is within 10 km. So it's basically one day walk. It's possible to reach all these raw materials that are taken back to the site. This could be part of the explanation for the importance, for the long time, the durability of the site. It's always in 2013, thanks to the collaboration with Ampello Fini and Nicasso University, we had the chance to do a geophysical prospection, a paliomanetic prospection on the site, which on the left figure you see the results, with a series of anomalies, well above the 40% nanotevla, which is the units. And we started in 2014 to excavate the first one, which is this one here on the southern part. Next one. We're going to expose what we consider a very unique structure. We call this HAT5. It's a very large structure. We are not sure yet if this is a proper HAT or something else. So far we expose almost 40% of the structures, which should belong about 16 meters, and open large about between 6 and 8 meters. The space, the internal space is divided in two parts, the external corridor and the central part. In the external corridor we have a clay bench, we're going around the perimeter wall, a small elliptic cyst in the center probably uses a fireplace. Next one. The most important thing that we found that the division between the corridor, external and the central part is marked by series of postors, and we actually found the actual post inside, which is still preserved. And again, Claudia is analyzing and will present some of the preliminary results on this. And also a series of other pits. You see here some example. There's a series of pits around here. Another large one is this one. You see here, which has been closed in a very complex ritual. A voluntary broken shirt is put on the floor. Stones, then again the same shirt, the same vessel broken, put on top of the pile of stone, and then the fire was put on. We don't know yet what is the purpose of this, but we think that of course the time will be taken in a moment of analyzing in England. We think, we hope that the evidence will provide the information about the agriculture transformation of products. We have a lot of evidence for cheese making, strainers, clay spoons. We think that all this federal power was in some way dedicated to the transformation of agriculture into the pastoral activity products. But this is our hypothesis, and of course we need more analysis on the go. The last slide, just to give you a hint of what has been felt for this 2018 campaign. We were opening the area trying to trace the northern side at five. We knew from a previous campaign that we were going through a series of levels dating to the Early Bronze Age. What we were not expecting that in the opening of this new trend, of the new squares just north of at five, the Early Bronze Age levels were characterized by the presence of a series of pits. The one on the lower part is about two metres long, is about 80 centimetres large. And within the filling of the pits, next one, we found a swamp waste, or we call it Italian amarcotti, and slugs that, thanks to the presence of Marco Pitone and the Portable Xareff had been analysed and they had clay slugs. We think, of course, we need more analysis, more work on this, but we think that this could be firing pits used to produce Early Bronze Age methods. I think this is all for the moment and of course we will continue and thank you very much for that.