First Insights on Proto-Aurignacian Subsistence Behaviors at Riparo Bombrini (Liguria, Italy)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Located in the Balzi Rossi Paleolithic site complex, Riparo Bombrini documents the oldest Proto-Aurignacian occupations in Liguria, Italy along with the neighboring site of Riparo Mochi. Bombrini itself is the sole site to have been entirely excavated and documented with modern archaeological methods. This makes it a key site to document subsistence behaviors characterizing the arrival of modern humans in western Europe. Unfortunately, the faunal remains have been badly fragmented by diverse taphonomic agents at Riparo Bombrini, the most damaging being the use of dynamite during the construction of the Genova-Marseille railway bisecting the site during the mid-nineteenth century. Given the extensive fragmentation and the near absence of morphologically identifiable bones (<1% identifiable), the ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) has emerged as an essential tool to supplement traditional zooarchaeological analysis when bones are mass sampled (hundreds of bone fragments). We present results of the first complete faunal analysis conducted on both Proto-Aurignacian layers at Bombrini (A1 and A2), which integrate taphonomy, zooarchaeology and ZooMS. Subsistence behaviors are then compared between both layers and confronted to the environmental and climatic contexts in which they unfolded. Finally, the results are integrated within behavioral reconstructions from the archaeological material already available, notably lithics.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24516