The ‘castellieri’ were inhabited between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. These are fortified settlements, with defensive walls in reinforced earth or dry stones, sometimes palisades, and in some cases surrounded by ditches. It is a rather widespread housing typology in the protohistoric context both in Italy and in some regions of Europe, but those of the Friulian and Karst-Istrian area are also distinguished by a particular autonomous cultural physiognomy.
The castle of Redipuglia (Gorizia) stands out for the preciousness of some finds such as the ‘pickaxe loaves’, bronze ingots of a characteristic shape of the final phase of the Bronze Age, a half-moon razor from the early Iron Age and six small bronzes human figure votives dating back to the second Iron Age (5th century BC), probably to refer to a sanctuary that must have existed at the site or in its vicinity.
