Research Compendium for 'Revisiting the Early Aurignacian in Italy: New Insights from Grotta della Cala (southern Campania)'
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The content available at the provided Zenodo DOI reproduces the results as documented in the publication. The files hosted at https://github.com/ArmandoFalcucci/Grotta-Della-Cala-Aurignacian represent the developmental versions and might have undergone modifications since the paper's publication.
Armando Falcucci, Keiko Kitagawa, Luc Doyon, Laura Tassoni, Tom Higham, Clarissa Domenici, Diego Dreossi, Jacopo Crezzini, Matteo Rossini, Stefano Benazzi, Ivan Martini, Francesco Boschin, Vincenzo Spagnolo, Adriana Moroni. Revisiting the Early Aurignacian in Italy: New Insights from Grotta della Cala (southern Campania). Journal Name, Volume Number, Page Numbers (in preparation). DOI: [Insert DOI]
Grotta della Cala (Marina di Camerota, southern Italy) is a key archaeological site spanning from the Middle Paleolithic to the Bronze Age, situated within a diverse geomorphological setting between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the southern Apennines. At the cave entrance, numerous artifacts associated with Aurignacian occupations were uncovered, including both lithic and organic materials. However, earlier interpretations were limited by challenges in dating the Upper Paleolithic layers and a lack of modern analytical methods for characterizing the finds. Recent excavations have refined the site’s chronology and further explored the Aurignacian sequence. This study builds on this updated framework, offering an interdisciplinary reassessment that includes technological analyses of lithic assemblages and bone tools, along with a taxonomic examination of the marine shells. Many of these shells were intentionally perforated, suggesting symbolic behaviors linked to coastal resource exploitation. Lithic technology at the site is characterized by the systematic production of miniaturized bladelets from carinated cores, while osseous technology centers on the manufacture of split-based antler points, marking the southernmost occurrence of this tool type in Europe. The integration of new radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating allows us to confidently assign all analyzed excavation spits to the Early Aurignacian, a significant finding, given that no other sites in the region securely postdate the Campanian Ignimbrite (~40,000 years ago). As such, Grotta della Cala is a crucial site for understanding the lifeways of Aurignacian foraging groups in the aftermath of this super-eruption and during Heinrich Stadial 4. Our comparative analysis of Early Aurignacian sites across Italy provides a clearer understanding of regional variability and continuity between 40,000 and 37,000 years ago, contributing to the broader debate on the biocultural dynamics of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe.
Early Upper Paleolithic; Homo sapiens; MIS3; Henrich Stadial 4; Lithic Technology; Osseous Technology; Malacology; OSL and Radiocarbon Dating; Human Behavior.
This repository contains data, code, and output files associated with the paper. The files are organized into the following directories:
data: Includes the complete dataset and the core dataset.script: Contains the R scripts for data analysis and visualization.output: Houses the generated outputs from the analysis, including figures, tables, and supplementary material
To replicate the results from the paper, follow these steps:
- Download the entire repository.
- Open the
Cala-Aurignacian.RprojR project file. - Navigate to the
scriptfolder, where you will find the R scripts arranged in a numbered order for reproducibility.
For consistent results, the renv package (v. 1.0.3) was used, following the procedures outlined in its vignette. All analyses were performed using R 4.3.1 on Microsoft Windows 10.0.19045 (64-bit). Necessary packages are provided within the renv folder.
- Code: MIT License (https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT), copyright holder: Armando Falcucci (2024).
- Data and Intellectual Work: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), copyright holder: the authors (2024).