Late Pleistocene-Holocene coastal adaptation in central Mediterranean: Snapshots from Grotta d’Oriente (NW Sicily)

Abstract

Marine faunal remains from Grotta d'Oriente (Favignana Island, NW Sicily) offer invaluable snapshots of human-coastal environment interaction in the central Mediterranean from the Late Pleistocene to the Middle Holocene. The long-term shellfish and fish records reflect human exploitation of coastal environments undergoing considerable reorganizations during the postglacial sea level rise and the progressive isolation of Favignana from mainland Sicily. We detected an intensification of marine resource exploitation between ~9.6 ka and ~7.8 ka BP, which corresponds with the isolation of Favignana Island and, later on, with the introduction of early agro-pastoral economy in this region. We suggest that a higher investment in marine resource exploitation by late foragers and early farmers in NW Sicily was also supported by an increase in marine productivity in the south Tyrrhenian Sea in the Middle Holocene.

Late Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers in the Central Mediterranean: new archaeological and genetic data from the Late Epigravettian burial Oriente C (Favignana, Sicily)

“…Early excavations were conducted, without a strict methodology, in the small chamber in 1972 (Mannino, 1972; 2002). New excavations were performed in 2005 as a part of an interdisciplinary project carried out by the University of Florence and Museo e Istituto Fiorentino di Preistoria (Colonese et al, 2011, 2014, 2018; Craig et al, 2010; Lo Vetro and Martini, 2006; Martini et al, 2012a,b). A new trench was opened in 2005 next to the trench excavated in the 1970s and accurate recovery of materials and a microstratigraphic approach were followed.…”

Genomic ancestry, diet and microbiomes of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers from San Teodoro cave (Sicily, Italy)

“…Sea fish consumption evidence at San Teodoro is in accordance with what is already known for the Late Palaeolithic in Sicily 51 and in other coeval contexts from the Mediterranean basin. In Sicily, an increase in marine exploitation has been observed in the Mesolithic due to a combination of sea level rising, population growth, and terrestrial resource depletion after the LGM 51 . However, only a few Upper Palaeolithic Sicilian sites provide sufficient stratigraphic and chronological information about the exploitation of aquatic resources 51 .…”

Investigating the diet of Mesolithic groups in the Southern Alps: An attempt using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses

“…Information from stable isotopes on the diet of coastal hunter-gatherers is also available for different Mediterranean sites from the mid-Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic (García Guixé et al, 2006;Craig et al, 2010;Mannino et al, 2011;2012;Fernández-López de Pablo et al, 2013;Fontanals-Coll et al, 2014;Salazar-García et al, 2014;Colonese et al, 2018). A review of the data is available in Salazar-García et al (2018).…”

“…Little or no consumption of marine food is attested by the Italian samples, except for the Gravettian individual from Arene Candide known as "Il Principe" (figure 1) (Pettitt et al, 2003). A slight increase in marine food consumption is recorded in Sicily from the Late Pleistocene to the early Holocene (figure 1) (Mannino et al, 2012;Colonese et al, 2018). Most authors argue that the limited evidence for marine resource consumption in most Mediterranean areas could be a consequence either of the Mediterranean Sea's low productivity compared to the Atlantic Ocean (review in Salazar-García et al, 2018) or of the absence of adequate technology for intensive fishing (Mannino et al, 2011;Mannino and Richards, 2018).…”