NEW EARLY HOLOCENE SETTLEMENT IN CENTRAL ITALY: THE MESOLITHIC SITE OF CONTRADA PACE (MARCHE REGION)

Early Holocene hunter-gatherer settlements are spread throughout Italy and testify to the exploitation of very different landscapes. Nonetheless, their preservation state is not always exceptional. This is not the case for Contrada Pace, an archaeological site recently discovered on a terrace of the Chienti river in central-eastern Italy. This paper reports on the geomorphological, pedo-stratigraphic, and archaeological record of one of the most complete and well-preserved Early Mesolithic open-air sites in Italy and southern Europe. Micro-stratigraphic excavations extended over more than 500 square meters have exposed a buried paleosol with anthropogenic features, which contained thousand lithic artefacts and organic remains framed in the context of a primary forest. These findings appear clustered in different functional areas that yielded multiple structured features. The field evidence integrated by radiocarbon dating and archaeobotanical, archaeomalacological and zooarchaeological data allowed to propose a first interpretation of the general structure of the site and the most significant featuresThe archaeological excavation of the site was carried out by ArcheoLAB (Macerata, Italy) in the framework of construction activities promoted by the Province of Macerata and the Municipality of Tolentino. DV has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement number: 886476 - LiMPH - H2020-MSCA-IF-2019). The archaeobotanical study and 14C dates were funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the Research and Innovation program of the European Community Horizon 2020 (HIDDEN FOODS no.639286 to EC)

Investigating the Early-to-Late Mesolithic Transition in Northeastern Italy: A Multifaceted Regional Perspective

This article focuses on the Mesolithic record of northeastern Italy, one of the key European regions for studying the last prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups. Most specifically, it aims to compare the rich Early and Late Mesolithic evidence, trying to shed some light on the shift between these two periods. Such a topic is approached at a regional scale, that is to say, by comparing the overall record and trying to identify similarities and divergences concerning different aspects of past lifeways such as settlement strategies, technology, exploitation of faunal resources, ornamental traditions and burial rituals. Overall, by providing an updated regional synthesis, the presented data highlight aspects of continuity and discontinuity between these two periods and contribute significantly to the debate concerning the modalities in which this transition took place in Southern Europe

Analisi Antropologica delle necropoli tardoantiche di Modena

Il presente contributo prende in esame i reperti osteologici provenienti da tre distinte aree sepolcrali in uso durante il periodo tardoantico esterne alle mura della citt\ue0 romana di Mutina. Nello specifico sono stati analizzati 101 scheletri: 13 provenienti dalla necropoli rinvenuta all\u2019incrocio tra Via Ciro Menotti e via Bellini nel 2009; 64 dalla necropoli di Piazza Grande messa in luce nel 1988 nella zona retrostante l\u2019abside del duomo e 24 dalla necropoli scoperta nel corso dei lavori per la riqualificazione della piazza XX Settembre effettuati nel 1997. In tutti i casi \ue8 stata messa in luce solo parte delle necropoli perch\ue9 gli scavi sono stati effettuati in circostanza di emergenza . L\u2019analisi antropologica dei resti ha permesso di trarre conclusioni su diversi aspetti quali ad esempio il numero minimo di individui, la distribuzione di sesso ed et\ue0 all\u2019interno della popolazione, lo stile di vita e le attivit\ue0 lavorative svolte, le abitudini alimentari, la provenienza geografica, il grado di violenza interpersonale. Tutti questi dati hanno permesso di trarre conclusioni, seppur preliminari, circa le comunit\ue0 che popolavano la citta di Mutina durante il Tardoantico, mettendo un accento sulle loro similitudini o differenze. Ovviamente si tratta solo di interpretazioni basate su dati parziali che dovranno essere messi in relazione con quanto emerso dagli studi delle altre discipline e necessariamente approfonditi ampliando il campione dei reperti sottoposti alle diverse analisi