Analisi tafonomica preliminare di un campione di resti di orso delle caverne della Caverna Pocala (Duino-Aurisina, TS) nel Carso triestino

Abstract – Pocala Cave (Duino-Aurisina, TS) is well known for the large amount of cave bear fossils (in particular Ursus spelaeus) discovered. Most of those remains are preserved today in the Museum of Natural History of Trieste. Raffaello Battaglia published the discovery of cave bear bone tools in 1922. He arrived at this conclusion because the “processed bones” were broken and smooth and he thought that “Mousterian Man” had handled and modified these bones to make tools or “prehistoric fibulae”. In addition to Battaglia’s bones we analysed a sample, comprising 3% (447 NR) of the total remains (17.195 NR) stored in the Museum of Natural History of Trieste. The remains studied come from excavations carried out by Carlo Marchesetti in 1904-1905. Unfortunately, the excavation methods used at that time make a precise chronostratigraphic contextualisation impossible. After revising the Museum’s database, which contains all the faunal remains from Pocala Cave, we carried out a detailed taphonomic analysis of all the surfaces of the osteological specimen of Ursus spelaeus vel ingressus. Mostly long bones and ribs were chosen in order to compare the taphonomy of the surfaces with Battaglia’s bone tools. The results of this work show unpublished aspects on the anthropic activities of Pocala Cave, highlighting the importance of the re-analysis of old museum collections. We documented for the first time the interaction between Neanderthals and cave bears on Trieste's Karst. This relationship was already confirmed in other north-eastern Adriatic caves including Grotta del Rio Secco and Grotta Fumane.