Middle Paleolithic Land Use in the Northern Adriatic: Preliminary Data from the Open-Air Site of Campanož (Croatia)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The site of Campanož, located in the south of the Istrian peninsula, is a relatively new discovery of the Middle Paleolithic record of Croatia. Because it is a stratified open-air site, its discovery has opened questions regarding Middle Paleolithic land use in a region that has until now been heavily biased toward cave sites. Furthermore, the site is characterized by a large assemblage of chert chunks (more than 100,000 in 100 m2) with only 5% of the finds classified as artifacts. A sample of the artifact assemblage was previously analyzed technologically, including defining production methods and the assemblage structure according to technological categories. The results are compared to previously published data from other Middle Paleolithic sites in the Adriatic region, as well as some still unpublished data from the Eastern Adriatic in order to highlight the character of land use and raw-material provisioning strategies of the Middle Paleolithic group(s) that occupied the site. The comparison suggests a presence of an expedient lithic technology at Campanož, with proximity to raw-material source(s) comprising a significant factor in this aspect of Middle Paleolithic technological behavior.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Research on the Paleolithic in the Mediterranean Region   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36957.0