An Investigation into Ochres from Arene Candide Cave: Implications for Mineralogical Properties and Provenance Studies in the Liguria Region

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.

The Arene Candide Cave, a key sequence for western Mediterranean prehistory, became famous in 1942 after the discovery of a Gravettian adolescent buried in a pit filled with ochre and spectacularly ornamented. At the end of the last glaciation, with a similar choice, at least 20 Final Epigravettian burials were deposited on a layer of ochre powder, which gave to this level and the to the bones themselves a distinctive red color. The provenance and compositional features of coloring material, naturally available in the Liguro-Provençal arc, has received scant attention despite their technical and symbolic value. Over the course of the 2008-2012 excavations, micromorphological samples were collected from the middle portion of the older excavations section, which is dated to the beginning of the Early Epigravettian (19,630 ± 250 BP). Among other findings, the micromorphological analyses recognized, in a specific layer, a relative abundance of ochre fragments scattered in a poorly sorted sediment. The results of the micromorphological and mineralogical analysis and their interpretations and correlations are discussed here. They shed new light on the geographical and geological origin of coloring material in Liguria and suggest that heating played an important role in the processing of the raw ochre.

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): 25437