Insights into the Late Upper Paleolithic of the Northern Adriatic from Ljubićeva Cave, Istria

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.

This paper presents the results of past and recent systematic research on the late Upper Paleolithic carried out in Ljubićeva Cave near Marčana, Croatia. The first excavations of the site occurred between 2008 and 2011 and yielded late Upper Paleolithic as well as Neolithic and Bronze Age discoveries. Since 2019, systematic archaeological exploration of the site has continued as part of the Croatian Science Foundation interdisciplinary project PREHISTRIA (grant no. IP-2019-04-7821). Based on the results of the radiometric dating of part of the layers, humans used the site twice during the Pleistocene, between 13,330 and 13,120 cal BP and 16,120 and 15,670 cal BP, respectively. The dating, combined with the lithic finds, points to the Late Epigravettian period (≈17,500–11,700 cal BP). The Late Epigravettian material found includes numerous remains of Pleistocene fauna, lithic industry, traces of burning, pieces of ocher, and other findings including some fragmentary human remains. Enhancing standard archaeological approaches, geophysical, sediment DNA, ZooMS, and large-scale 3D scanning, among other techniques, are expanding our understanding of the Late Epigravettian lifeways in the Northern Adriatic.

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): 37152.0