Here we are at the last of the PREHISTORY MEETINGS before the summer break. Wednesday 19 June 2024 George Samorini presented his report entitled Archeology of psychoactive plants in Italy e Maria Laura Leone told us about Archeology of opium in Daunia: among steles, vases and female figures.
George Samorini is an independent researcher, specializing in the ethnobotany of psychoactive plants. He has conducted field research in equatorial Africa, Mexico, the Amazon, India. Among archaeo-ethnobotanical research, he identified the most ancient cult of hallucinogenic mushrooms expressed in the epipaleolithic paintings of the Sahara and compiled data relating to the most ancient documentation of man's relationship with the main psychoactive plants around the world. He is a consultant to various archaeological research teams in the Mediterranean and South America. He is the author of numerous books and about a hundred articles in scientific journals. His relationship, Italian archeology and psychoactive plants will deal with the research of recent years which is multiplying the indications of the use of psychoactive plants among the ancient populations of the Italian territory, and this also thanks to the new methods and analytical tools available to archaeologists.
The search for vegetal and chemical traces is carried out not only in terracotta vases and other artefacts, but also in biological samples of human remains such as dental stones, hair and bone tissue. In these investigations, traces of the presence of alcohol, opium, hemp, mushrooms and ephedra were detected.
Maria Laura Leone, who has been collaborating with the Preistoria in Italia site for some time, is an archaeologist and art historian, graduated in Lecce with Emmanuel Anati, specialized in Bari with Alfredo Geniola and trained at the Camuno Center for Prehistoric Studies in Valcamonica, with whom she participated in study trips on the prehistoric art of Europe, Israel and China and on the phenomenon of Statue-Steles and Megalithism in Italy, Switzerland and France. You have taken part in archaeological excavations collaborating with the Superintendency of Puglia, Athens and the University of Bari and the Sapienza University of Rome. You have held conferences in Italy, Greece and Sweden and published several works, including a monograph on the art of Grotta dei Cervi in Porto Badisco. Her main studies include: the reading of the Grotta dei Cervi paintings as mythical expressions intertwined with Modified States of Consciousness; the interpretation of the Daunian stelae as divine simulacra; the identification of the symbolism of the Opium Poppy in ancient Daunia. He created the site www.artepreistorica.com with the scientific contribution of scholars from various countries and holds the chair of Art History at the “Casardi” Classical High School in Barletta.
The next meetings, now scheduled for autumn, will be communicated on the website www.preistoriainitalia.it and on the Preistoriainitalia.it Facebook page
