An In-Depth Study of the Arma Veirana Pierced Shells and Pendants used as Grave Goods

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.

During the 2017 excavation season at Arma Veirana, a cave site located in the Italian pre-Alps, a Final Epigravettian burial was discovered. Careful excavation of the feature has uncovered an important number of grave goods comprised of over 80 perforated marine shells. The majority of these ornaments were made from the shells of Columbella rustica, while four bigger pendants – the likes of which had never been encountered before in an Upper Paleolithic site – seem to have been made from larger bivalves. Here, we present the results of our research on these ornaments, which involves the use of experimental archaeology to reproduce the large pendants and better understand the importance of the interred individual. We will also place this new burial and its associated grave goods within the contemporary context of the region, as well as the larger mortuary context of the European Upper Paleolithic.

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): 25021