© Jeff Matthews
entry Oct 2015
The Paglicci Grotto
—or "Young man, I don't care if are late for Kick the Skull practice! You
finish your porridge or I'll bludgeon you with this stone-ax! Just you try
me, kiddo!"
The Paglicci Grotto has made
interesting news recently.* That cave is
located about 140 km/90 miles north-east of
Naples within the confines of the Gargano National
Park. The Gargano is in the province of
Foggia in the region of Puglia and is the
“spur” of the boot of Italy, jutting out into
the Adriatic. The spur used to be called Capitanata
and in ancient times was Daunia. It
is, by any standard, an area of great beauty
and variety. The cave, itself, is near the
town of Rignano Garganico (the smallest town
on the Gargano promontory); the cave is
certainly one of the most important
prehistoric sites in Italy, containing tens of
thousands of individual finds such as
paleolithic tools, human and animal bones,
hand prints, mural wall paintings (image,
right—just like the more famous sites in
France and Spain) and, now, a pestle (a
grinding stone) with evidence of paleolithic
oat harvesting dating to 30,600 BC.
Chronologically, the cave manifests evidence
of human activity during both the Aurignacian
and the Gravettian cultures of the Upper
Paleolithic (that is, 38 to 22 thousand years
ago. Those names of cultures are type sites
named for places in France where they were
first discovered and studied). The Paglicci
cave contains the earliest such remains
discovered in Italy.
[related items: Early Modern Humans in Southern Italy and Roccamonfina]
The Paglicci Grotto
—or "Young man, I don't care if are late for Kick the Skull practice! You
finish your porridge or I'll bludgeon you with this stone-ax! Just you try
me, kiddo!"
The Paglicci Grotto has made
interesting news recently.* That cave is
located about 140 km/90 miles north-east of
Naples within the confines of the Gargano National
Park. The Gargano is in the province of
Foggia in the region of Puglia and is the
“spur” of the boot of Italy, jutting out into
the Adriatic. The spur used to be called Capitanata
and in ancient times was Daunia. It
is, by any standard, an area of great beauty
and variety. The cave, itself, is near the
town of Rignano Garganico (the smallest town
on the Gargano promontory); the cave is
certainly one of the most important
prehistoric sites in Italy, containing tens of
thousands of individual finds such as
paleolithic tools, human and animal bones,
hand prints, mural wall paintings (image,
right—just like the more famous sites in
France and Spain) and, now, a pestle (a
grinding stone) with evidence of paleolithic
oat harvesting dating to 30,600 BC.
Chronologically, the cave manifests evidence
of human activity during both the Aurignacian
and the Gravettian cultures of the Upper
Paleolithic (that is, 38 to 22 thousand years
ago. Those names of cultures are type sites
named for places in France where they were
first discovered and studied). The Paglicci
cave contains the earliest such remains
discovered in Italy.The Paglicci cave was discovered in the 1950s and has had the typical roller-coaster ride of public and scholarly attention, going from enthusiasm to neglect and every stop along the way. There is apparently always danger of the cave collapsing. Need money for that. The museum is not yet open. Need money for that. August 13 of 2016 has already been set aside as the First National Paglicci Grotto Day. Really need money for that!
The pestle-like grinding tool in Paglicci was discovered in 1989. Recent studies have found traces of oats on the tool. According to Marta Lippi, a botany professor at the University of Florence and lead author of the recent report, the tool dates back some 32,000 years and is the earliest evidence of food processing in Europe; that is, evidence of the refinement of grain to make such things as porridge. So, they are not just hunting and gathering. They are making real cave-man breakfasts!
| *Original article
entitled "Multistep food plant
processing at Grotta Paglicci
(Southern Italy) around 32,600 cal
B.P." in the on-line version of PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Sept 29, 2015, vol. 112 no. 39. Reported here. Article abstract:
|
Residue analyses on a
grinding tool recovered at Grotta
Paglicci sublayer 23A [32,614 ±
429 calibrated (cal) B.P.],
Southern Italy, have demonstrated
that early modern humans collected
and processed various plants. The
recording of starch grains
attributable to Avena (oat)
caryopses expands our information
about the food plants used for
producing flour in Europe during
the Paleolithic and about the
origins of a food tradition
persisting up to the present in
the Mediterranean basin. The
quantitative distribution of the
starch grains on the surface of
the grinding stone furnished
information about the tool
handling, confirming its use as a
pestle-grinder, as suggested by
the wear-trace analysis. The
particular state of preservation
of the starch grains suggests the
use of a thermal treatment before
grinding, possibly to accelerate
drying of the plants, making the
following process easier and
faster. The study clearly
indicates that the exploitation of
plant resources was very important
for hunter–gatherer populations,
to the point that the Early
Gravettian inhabitants of Paglicci
were able to process food plants
and already possessed a wealth of
knowledge that was to become
widespread after the dawn of
agriculture.
The area of Rignano Garganico has taken to calling itself the "Prehistoric capital of Italy" —maybe with good reason. The Paglicci cave is the best-known and best documented site, but there are others such as the paleolithic Grotta Spagnoli, the neolithic village of Villanova (not the same as the Villanova type site near Bologna), the megalithic dolmen of Madre di Cristo, and notably, the string of caves in the Valley of Ividoro I, noted for their wall graffiti and designs in coal and red ocher. The best single local museum to see much of this material is the National Archaeological Museum of Manfredonia, the largest city on the Gargano.
[related items: Early Modern Humans in Southern Italy and Roccamonfina]
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