Notarchirico

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elephant fossil

Notarchirico or Venosa-Notarchirico is an archaeological site about 9 km from Venosa in the Italian region of Basilicata . It shows traces of human presence and a piece of the thigh bone of a Homo erectus woman from the early Paleolithic . The site was dated to 650,000 to 600,000 years ago, in the last few years to around 640,000 years, and due to its numerous layers of settlement is considered one of the most productive old Paleolithic sites in Europe and the oldest in the Acheuléen . It was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, along with Isernia la Pineta . The finds are in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venosa .

Location and classification

Like Notarchirico, all of the ancient and early Middle Palaeolithic sites in Italy are free-range sites, apart from Visogliano in Veneto. They are all below 500 m above sea level, are located in the vicinity of the Apennines or were originally near the coast, a river or lake, and have a corresponding ecology. They were all not in higher mountain areas, but in hilly or flat landscapes. Only after 300,000 before today do human traces appear even at higher altitudes.

The area is characterized by pronounced volcanism, whereby the sites indicate that the region has been repopulated by hominids every time. The Monte Vulture volcanic complex is only 20 km from the Venosa Basin, a two to four kilometer wide west-northwest-east-southeast sloping depression. It was the paleo valley of a river that flowed into the Bradano. The oldest volcanic ash layers formed 860,000 to 830,000 years ago. Additional layers formed 670,000-660,000 years ago and 500,000 to 450,000 years ago. The oldest hand axes at the site are also the oldest in Europe, where none of the more than 700,000 year old sites offered such tools.

The Venosa Basin eroded in the lower Pleistocene by watercourses to form a narrow, 100 m deep valley. Around 1900 700–800 handaxes were found there near Venosa Terranera. The Loreto camp site was excavated from 1956 to 1961 under the direction of AC Blanc and G. Chiappella, and the cores and flakes of the Tayacien and hand axes of the Acheuléen came to light. The Loreto-Notarchirico site in the same hill was excavated from 1980.

Discovery, excavation

Stratigraphic sequence

The excavations took place from 1980, later under the direction of the Soprintendenza Speciale at the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico "Luigi Pigorini" in Rome in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana . In addition to pebble tools, the excavation found nine hand axes , a piece of the thigh of a female Homo erectus and numerous remains of animals and plants.

Twelve layers are now differentiated in a stratigraphic sequence 7 m thick. Between each layer there are sterile layers 10 to 100 cm high. The bottom layer was dated 650,000 years ago, the top layer was 200,000 years younger.

Ecology and dating

Dama dama clactoniana , Natural History Museum , London

For dating u. a. Arvicola cantiana , a species of mouse from which numerous bones were found. Various rodent teeth, the generational succession of which are short and the evolutionary changes correspondingly rapid, which makes them suitable for dating, have been recovered from all walks of life. The species include Pliomys episcopalis , Apodemus sp. or Arvicola terrestris , but above all the most common Microtus sp. arvalis-agrestis . In contrast, Microtus nivalis is only represented by a single molar . This species now lives above the tree line, which indicates that the climate at that time must have been significantly cooler. Arvicola terrestris did not appear until the early Middle Pleistocene, while Pliomys episcopalis disappeared before the Late Middle Pleistocene.

Remains of mammals such as Palaeoloxodon antiquus ( European forest elephant ), deer ( Dama clactoniana , Cervus elaphus ( red deer ) and Megaceros solilhacus ) and bovids ( Bos primigenius and Bison schoetensack ) were also found. The elephant was apparently dismantled on the spot (butchery site), which indicates that, on the one hand, the lower jaw was several meters from the skull, and on the other, a large number of surrounding tools. The find area covers an area of ​​6 by 4 meters. A total of 42 lithic artifacts and 85 animal remains were found. 38 of them could be assigned to the fallen, not yet adult elephant. The chewing apparatus and the back of the head were missing. The brain, tongue and other soft parts of the skull were probably removed by humans and dissected on site to be eaten.

Human remains

Lower leg of a female Homo erectus

In 1985, a woman's femur was found alongside the tools, a human remains. This bone was dated to about 300,000 years and is in the Museum of Venosa (as of 2011). The fossil has now been dated to at least 360,000 years, making it the oldest human remnant in southern Italy to date.

literature

  • David Lefèvre, Jean-Paul Raynal, Gérard Vernet, Guy Kieffer, Marcello Piperno : Tephro-stratigraphy and the age of ancient Southern Italian Acheulean settlements: The sites of Loreto and Notarchirico (Venosa, Basilicata, Italy) , in: Quaternary International 223– 224 (2010) 360-368.
  • Marcello Piperno : Il sito di Notarchirico (Venosa, Basilicata) , Consiglio Regionale della Basilicata, undated, pp. 337-342
  • Marcello Piperno: Notarchirico 500000 anni fa , Osanna, Venosa 1996.
  • Marcello Piperno, A. Tagliacozzo: The Elephant Butchery Area at the Middle Pleistocene site of Notarchirico (Venosa, Basilicata, Italy) , in: The World of Elephants - International Congress, Rome 2001 , pp. 230–236 ( online , PDF)
  • Jean-Paul Raynal, David Lefévre, Gérard Vernet, Geneviève Papy: Un bassin, un volcan: lithostratigraphie du site acheuléen de Notarchirico (Venosa, Basilicata, Italia) , in: Osanna (1999) 175-205.
  • Giancarlo Belli, Giorgio Belluomini, Pier Francesco Cassoli, Silvana Cecchi, Mauro Cucarzi, Lauretta Delitala, Gino Fornaciari, Francesco Mallegni, Marcello Piperno, Aldo Segre, Eugenia Segre-Naldini: Discovery of a human acheulian femur at notarchirico venosa: basilicata italy , Anthropologie 95.1 (1991) 47-88.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Benedetto Sala: A Preliminary Report on the Microvertebrates of Notarchirico, Venosa , in: Preistoria Alpina - Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali 25 (1989) 7-14, here: p. 8 ( online , PDF).
  2. ↑ Cannone Andrea: La protezione internazionale ed europea dei beni culturali , Cacucci, 2014, p. 126.
  3. ↑ Jean-Paul Raynal, David Lefevre, Géerard Vernet, Thierry Pilleyre, Serge Sanzelle, Jean Fain, Didier Miallier, Michèle Montret: Sedimentary Dynamics and Tecto-volcanismin the Venosa Basin (Basilicata, Italia) , in: Quaternary International 47/48 ( 1998) 97-105 ( online , PDF).
  4. ↑ Alison S. Brooks, Rick Potto: New Research in Early Human Origins 7 to 1 Million Years ago , in: Ruth Selig, Marilyn R. London (Ed.): Anthropology Explored, Second Edition. The Best of Smithsonian AnthroNotes , 2013.
  5. ↑ For classification cf. C. Guérin: Biozones or mammal units? Methods and Limits in Biochronology , in: Everett H. Lindsay, Volker Fahlbusch, Pierre Mein (Eds.): European Neogene Mammal Chronology , Springer Science & Business Media, 2013, pp. 91–118, here: p. 104.