Italy

Late Pleistocene Settlement of the Alps

The Neanderthal Museum is involved in an excavation on the southern edge of the Alps. Since 2010, an excavation in Rio Secco Cave has been undertaken in cooperation with the Universities of Ferrara (Italy) and Tarragona (Spain), and the Municipality of Clauzetto. The site is located in Friuli in northeastern Italy.

A test excavation in 2002 revealed that a Neanderthal artefact horizon was situated at a depth of 2m. Little is known about the behaviour of Neanderthals on the southern edge of the Alps. A further artefact horizon was unexpectedly uncovered. The new horizon is approximately 50cm above the Neanderthal one and contains artefacts from the Gravettian culture.

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Literature

Peresani, Marco; Duches, Rosella; Pastoors, Andreas (2011): Evidence of gravettian frequentation around 30ky bp at the foot of the Friulian Dolomites. In: Gortania 33, S. 93–100.

Peresani, Marco; Gurioli, Fabio (2007): The Rio Secco Cave, a new final Middle Paleolithic site in North-eastern Italy. In: Eurasian Prehistory 5, S. 85–94.

Peresani, Marco; Pastoors, Andreas; Vaquero, Manuel; Romandini, Matteo; Duches, Rosella; Jéquier, Camille et al. (2012): The Rio Secco Cave and the North Adriatic region, a key context for investigating the Neanderthal demise. Project Gallery. In: Antiquity 86 (332). Online verfügbar unter http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/peresani332/.

Peresani, Marco; Romandini, Matteo; Duches, Rosella; Jéquier, Camille; Nannini, Nicola; Pastoors, Andreas et al. (2014): New evidence for the Mousterian and Gravettian at Rio Secco Cave, Italy. In: Journal of Field Archaeology 39 (4), S. 401–416.

Romandini, Matteo; Peresani, Marco; Laroulandie, Véronique; Metz, Laure; Pastoors, Andreas; Vaquero, Manuel; Slimak, Ludovic (2014): Convergent evidence of eagle talons used by late Neanderthals in Europe: a further assessment on sybolism. In: PLOS ONE 9 (7), S. e101278. Online verfügbar unter DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101278.

Talamo, Sahra; Peresani, Marco; Romandini, Matteo; Duches, Rosella; Jéquier, Camille; Nannini, Nicola et al. (2014): Detecting human presence at the border of the northeastern Italien Pre-Alps. 14C dating at Rio Secco cave as expression of the first Gravettian and the late Mousterian in the northern Adriatic region. In: PLOS ONE 9 (4), S. 1–11. Online verfügbar unter DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0095376.