L’occupazione a ovest del Ticino. Inquadramento e prospettive di ricerca nel territorio novarese

The paper offers an updated synthesis of Middle and Late Bronze Age settlement dynamics in the province of Novara (northwestern Italy), situated between the Sesia and Ticino rivers. Building on heritage protection activities carried out by the local Soprintendenza and on the systematic integration of published and unpublished data into a GIS platform, the authors reconstruct a distribution map of Bronze Age sites articulated across three geographic districts: the northern lake zone, the intermediate moraine plateau, and the southern alluvial plain. The Ticino river is identified as a cultural and communicative hinge between the Scamozzina and Canegrate culture areas on both banks, a hypothesis supported by the recent find of a Late Bronze Age sword in the riverbed near Turbigo. The study also highlights the severe impact of post-medieval rice cultivation on the preservation and visibility of protohistoric sites in the plain, and presents new evidence for early water management practices at San Pietro Mosezzo, broadening the known geographic extent of Bronze Age hydraulic infrastructure in the Po plain.