Early Holocene hunter-gatherer settlements are spread throughout Italy and testify to the exploitation of very different landscapes. Nonetheless, their preservation state is not always exceptional. This is not the case for Contrada Pace, an archaeological site recently discovered on a terrace of the Chienti river in central-eastern Italy. This paper reports on the geomorphological, pedo-stratigraphic, and archaeological record of one of the most complete and well-preserved Early Mesolithic open-air sites in Italy and southern Europe. Micro-stratigraphic excavations extended over more than 500 square meters have exposed a buried paleosol with anthropogenic features, which contained thousand lithic artefacts and organic remains framed in the context of a primary forest. These findings appear clustered in different functional areas that yielded multiple structured features. The field evidence integrated by radiocarbon dating and archaeobotanical, archaeomalacological and zooarchaeological data allowed to propose a first interpretation of the general structure of the site and the most significant features.
Visentin, D., Potì, A., Bassetti, M., Bertola, S., Carra, M., Cattabriga, G., et al. (2022). First data on the Early Holocene settlementof the Marche Region (Central Italy): the sites of Contrada Pace. ALPINE AND MEDITERRANEAN QUATERNARY, 35 (1), 1-22 [10.26382/AMQ.2022.03].
First data on the Early Holocene settlementof the Marche Region (Central Italy): the sites of Contrada Pace
Carra M.;Cristiani E.;Peresani M.;
2022
Abstract
Early Holocene hunter-gatherer settlements are spread throughout Italy and testify to the exploitation of very different landscapes. Nonetheless, their preservation state is not always exceptional. This is not the case for Contrada Pace, an archaeological site recently discovered on a terrace of the Chienti river in central-eastern Italy. This paper reports on the geomorphological, pedo-stratigraphic, and archaeological record of one of the most complete and well-preserved Early Mesolithic open-air sites in Italy and southern Europe. Micro-stratigraphic excavations extended over more than 500 square meters have exposed a buried paleosol with anthropogenic features, which contained thousand lithic artefacts and organic remains framed in the context of a primary forest. These findings appear clustered in different functional areas that yielded multiple structured features. The field evidence integrated by radiocarbon dating and archaeobotanical, archaeomalacological and zooarchaeological data allowed to propose a first interpretation of the general structure of the site and the most significant features.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
