Direct evidence that late Neanderthal occupation precedes a technological shift in southwestern Italy (data templates and R script)

Menghi Sartorio, Jessica Cristina ; Bortolini, Eugenio ; Oxilia, Gregorio (2022) Direct evidence that late Neanderthal occupation precedes a technological shift in southwestern Italy (data templates and R script). University of Bologna. DOI 10.6092/unibo/amsacta/6885. [Dataset]

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Abstract

During the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition (50,000 and 40,000 years ago), interaction between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens varied across Europe. In southern Italy, the association between Homo sapiens fossils and non-Mousterian material culture, as well as the mode and tempo of Neanderthal demise, are still vividly debated. This work presents two lower deciduous molars uncovered at Roccia San Sebastiano (Mondragone-Caserta, Italy), stratigraphically associated with Mousterian (RSS1) and Uluzzian (RSS2) artefacts. Using virtual morphometric methods and supervised learning algorithms we show that RSS1, whose Mousterian context appears more recent than 44,800-44,230 cal BP, can be attributed to a Neanderthal, while RSS2, found in an Uluzzian context that we dated to 42,640-42,380 cal BP, is attributed to Homo sapiens. This site therefore yields the most recent direct evidence for a Neanderthal presence in southern Italy and confirms a later shift to Early Upper Palaeolithic technology in southwestern Italy compared to the earliest Uluzzian evidence at Grotta del Cavallo (Puglia, Italy).

Abstract
Document type
Dataset
Creators
CreatorsAffiliationORCID
Menghi Sartorio, Jessica CristinaUniversità di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Impresa “Mario Lucertini”, Via Cracovia 50, 00133 Roma, Italy0000-0001-9920-8378
Bortolini, EugenioUniversità di Bologna, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali, Via degli Ariani 1, 48121, Ravenna, Italy; Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Institució Milà i Fontanals de Investigación en Humanidades, CSIC0000-0001-6751-5680
Oxilia, GregorioUniversità di Bologna, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali, Via degli Ariani 1, 48121, Ravenna, Italy0000-0001-5412-0997
Keywords
Neanderthal; Deciduous human molars; Mediterranean Europe; Uluzzian; Virtual analysis; Supervised learning algorithms
Subjects
DOI
Deposit date
04 Apr 2022 09:53
Last modified
09 Nov 2022 11:36
Project name
SUCCESS - The earliest migration of Homo sapiens in Southern Europe: understanding the biocultural processes that define our uniqueness
Funding program
EC - H2020
URI

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