Grotta Romanelli

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Grotta Romanelli (Italy)
Grotta Romanelli
Grotta Romanelli

The archaeological site of the Grotta Romanell (Romanelli Cave) was already known by Ulderico Botti in 1861, but it was not researched until 1900 by Paolo Emilio Stasi (1840–1922). The cave is located in the very south of Apulia , on the border between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas , in the province of Lecce . It is the type site of Romanellia , a facies of Epigravettia , as the last phase of the hunter-gatherer cultures before the Neolithic in the Mediterranean is called. Romanellia, named after the cave, was found in southeastern Italy between 13,000 and 8,000 BC. Prove; most dates are between 11,000 and 9,500 BC. Chr.

The remains of an Equus hydruntinus from the Grotta Romanelli were acquired in 1917 by Professor Paolo Emilio Stasi. He, in turn, met the anthropologist Ettore Regalìa (1842–1914) in Florence , the director of the Istituto di Studi di Paleontologia Umana , who had led the excavations at the time.

Gian Alberto Blanc directed the first excavations, which took place between 1914 and 1938. Later excavations were carried out by Luigi Cardini. The earliest finds that one in the terre rosse made (red earth) in the südapulischen cave were in the Middle Palaeolithic dated, then chronologically follow only again finds from the Magdalenian and the Azilian in over a huge hiatus lying terre brune (brown earth ). The latter was in five Strata divided as A to E were called. The hunting spectrum of the Epipalaeolithic inhabitants mainly included wild boar and deer as well as aurochs . In the meantime, more strata have been excavated, so that stratum G could be dated to an age of 69,000 to 40,000 ± 3250 years. The remains of a hippopotamus have also been identified there.

Limestone blocks and slabs repeatedly showed figurative, schematic and abstract representations. There were also engravings on the cave walls. Among the engravings, in addition to a depiction of a bovid, there was also an approximately 2 cm high work, which probably depicts the outline of a stylized female figure of the Gönnersdorf type, which is the area in which this type of depiction was found at more than 40 early to late Paleolithic sites especially in Central and Western Europe, would expand considerably. More than 400 representations of this type were discovered at the said site, which is located in Neuwied . In wall art, depictions of this type were limited to Central and Western Europe before the Romanelli find (including Lalinde, Le Courbet, Fontalès, Pestillac). The upper part of the body remained open, the lower part was spotted. The Romanelli woman was badly damaged by mosses in the upper area, while the lower part is quite well preserved and sharply delineated. Arms are not visible.

In 2015, the excavations were resumed under the direction of Luca Bellucci, Dawid Adam Iurino, Ilaria Mazzini and Sonia Tucci, among other things to obtain more precise dates, but also to find the remains of numerous mammals, such as hippos or fallow deer , wolves or hyenas, to investigate aurochs and birds, including griffon vultures, with more modern means than they were last available during excavations in the 1970s.

literature

  • Pier Francesco Fabbri, Elettra Ingravallo, Antonio Mangia (eds.): Grotta Romanelli nel centenario della sua scoperta (1900–2000) , Congedo, 2003.
  • Margherita Mussi , Alessandro De Marco: A Gönnersdorf-style engraving in the parietal art of Grotta Romanelli (Apulia, southern Italy) , in: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte 17 (2008) 97-104. ( online , PDF)
  • Pier Francesco Cassoli, Ivana Fiore, Antonio Tagliacozzo: Butchery and exploitation of large mammals in the Epigravettian levels of Grotta Romanelli (Apulia, Italy) , in: Anthropozoologica 25-26 (1997) 309-318.
  • Bruno Compagnoni, Antonio Curci, Antonio Tagliacozzo: Exploitation of the fox in the Epigravettian levels of Grotta Romanelli (Apulia, Italy) , in: Anthropozoologica 25-26 (1997) 319-328.
  • Paolo Graziosi: Les gravures de la Grotte Romanelli (Puglia-Italie). Essai comparatif , in: Yearbook for Prehistoric and Ethnographic Art 8 (1932–1933) 26–36.
  • Antonio Tagliacozzo: Butchering and cooking of birds in the paleolithic site of Grotta Romanelli (Italy) , in: International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 7.4 (1997) 303-320.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Simonetta Monechi, Lorenzo Rook: Il Museo di Storia Naturale dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze. Le collezioni geologiche e paleontologiche / The Museum of Natural History of the University of Florence. The Geological and Paleontological Collections , Firenze University Press, Florence 2009, p. 48.
  2. ↑ Raffaele Sardella, Davide Bertè, Dawid Adam Iurino, Marco Cherin, Antonio Tagliacozzo: The wolf from Grotta Romanelli (Apulia, Italy) and its implications in the evolutionary history of Canis lupus in the Late Pleistocene of Southern Italy , in: Quaternary International 328 -329 (2014) 179-195.
  3. ↑ Luca Pandolfi, Carmelo Petronio: A brief review of the occurrences of Pleistocene Hippopotamus (Mammalia, Hippopotamidae) in Italy , in: Geologia Croatica 68.3 (2015) 313-319.
  4. ↑ Sabine Gaudzinski-Windhäuer, Olaf Jörns: Contextualising the female image - symbols for common idea sand communal identity in Upper Palaeolithic Societies. In: Fiona Coward, Robert Hosfield, Matt Pope, Francis Wenban-Smith (Eds.): Settlement, Society and Cognition in Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 288-314, here: Fig. 16.2.3, p. 292.
  5. ↑ Carmelo Petronio, Giuseppe di Stefano, Luca Pandolfi, Leonardo Salari: The Late Pleistocene mammal fauna from Montemerano - Manciano (Grosseto, central Italy) , in: Bollettino del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Verona 38 (2014) 103–116, here : P. 113.
  6. ↑ Federico Morelli , Anna Maria Kubicka, Piotr Tryjanowski, Emma Nelson: The Vulture in the Sky and the Hominin on the Land: Three Million Years of Human – Vulture Interaction , in: Anthrozoös: A multidisciplinary journal of the interactions of people and animals 28 , 3 (2015) 449-468.
  7. ^ Report of the RAI .

Coordinates: 40 ° 0 ′ 58.2 ″  N , 18 ° 26 ′ 0 ″  E