Gobero: the secular and sacred place

This final chapter revises the archaeological data from the main sites (G1 and G3) at Gobero and considers the different time periods when the area functioned as a secular place for the living, a sacred place for the dead, or possibly a sacred place for both the living and the dead. A description of the settlers of Gobero, associated with the chronological data from either the burials or the archaeological artefacts, opens the chapter. The people who were buried at the site are then presented. The presence of a lake at Gobero was a determining factor for human occupation as the sites that developed on the lake shores indicate. The environment and the landscape, which varied with the changing climatic conditions of the 5000 years of occupation of the area, are thus summarized. The chapter continues with an analysis and a critical discussion of the major features that the people who lived at Gobero displayed with their lifestyle and behaviour: their stone tools and ceramic vessels, the combined use of the site as a place for the living and for the dead, the settlement pattern of the two main sites, the reasons for the early Holocene foragers to choose a low mobility system and those of the middle Holocene herders to practise a comparable choice, and the practises of food production at the sites. Finally, the epilogue of the Gobero area is considered.