725
A New Cultural Frontier for
the Last Neanderthals: The Uluzzian
in Northern Italy
Marco Peresani
Department of Biology and Evolution, Section of
Palaeobiology, Prehistory and Anthropology, University of
Ferrara, Corso Ercole I d’Este 32, I-44100 Ferrara, Italy
(marco.peresani@unife.it). 21 III 08
CA
Online-Only Material: Supplement A
The Middle–Upper Paleolithic shift was a crucial event in-
timately involved in Neanderthal biogeography and the
patchy scenario that emerges from the last marked cultural
and behavioral evolution our extinct relatives underwent dur-
ing the interval 50-30 k.yr. BP. In Mediterranean Europe, this
behavior, considered modern, gave rise to the Uluzzian, a
cultural complex confined to central-southern Italy and
Greece as a consequence of the supposed retreat of archaic
humans in the face of the rapid diffusion of Homo sapiens.
The recent discovery of dwelling structures and lithic imple-
ments at Fumane Cave in northeastern Italy redraws this sce-
nario and depicts at 33.4 k.yr. BP the northernmost frontier
to which the Uluzzian spread around the Great Adriatic Plain,
a pivotal region near the western edge of the Middle Danube
basin, where the last Neanderthals were using very different
cultural items.
The northern coastal belt of the Mediterranean Sea is rec-
ognized that one of the key areas for reconstructing the history
of the Middle–Upper Paleolithic shift and the dispersal of
modern humans in Europe from the easternmost regions
(Mellars 1992, 2004; Bar-Yosef 2000, 2006; Kozłowski and
Otte 2000; Stringer 2002). This crucial biocultural threshold
involved a set of processes concerned with the biogeography
of the last Neanderthals and the rapid spread of the proto-
Aurignacian and Aurignacian, giving rise to a patchy scenario
in which some complexes or specific assemblages document
the last marked cultural evolution of our extinct relatives
during the interval 50–30 k.yr. BP. During this period, be-
haviors that are considered modern arose and flourished in
regional Mousterian entities. One of the most intriguing cat-
egories of evidence is the geographical distribution of some
of these complexes, which in Mediterranean Europe are con-
fined to peninsulas such as Italy, where Neanderthals may
have invented the Uluzzian culture (Palma di Cesnola 1989).
Recovered in several caves and open-air sites in central-south-
ern Italy, Uluzzian implements or something comparable have

2008 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2008/4904-0009$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/
588540
also been found in the Peloponnese at Klisoura Cave (Kou-
mouzelis et al. 2001). The constrained geography of Italy, with
well-defined routes of movement and communication and a
more or less isolated southern extremity, makes the peninsula
an ideal place to examine hypothetical migrations, refugia,
and other forms of population interactions in the Late Pleis-
tocene. During the last glacial period, the most open routes
of faunal and human movement would have been to the east,
around the Great Adriatic Plain, which emerged as a result
of an 80-m drop in sea level.
The Uluzzian culture is documented at several open sites
and in the sedimentary sequences of the Uluzzo Bay caves
(Grotta del Cavallo, Grotta Bernardini, Grotta-Riparo di
Uluzzo) in southern Apulia and the Cala and Castelcivita
caves in Campania, where it systematically overlies the last
Mousterian layers, separated from it by a discontinuity, or
sterile level, that proves the absence of stratigraphic alterna-
tions between the two cultural sequences. The relationship of
the Uluzzian to its remains is extremely weak and is based
on two deciduous teeth found at Grotta del Cavallo (Palma
di Cesnola 1989). For the most part, Uluzzian assemblages
have been assigned a chronological position based on either
broad paleoclimatic indicators or typological affinities with
the different phases described for the reference sequence of
Grotta del Cavallo. Numerical ages are available only from
Grotta del Cavallo and Castelcivita, where the Uluzzian upper
chronological boundary is in stratigraphic continuity; at the
first site, layer Ei-ii produced a single radiocarbon determi-
nation of 131 k.yr. BP (Palma di Cesnola 1989); at Castel-
civita, a handful of dates frame the Uluzzian between 33.5
and 32.5 k.yr. BP (Gambassini 1997). These measurements
contrast with the first appearance of the proto-Aurignacian
(a proxy for anatomically modern humans) at 37–35 k.yr. BP
in northern Italy (Broglio 1996), a penetration by the bearers
of this complex onto the peninsula that was slowed by existing
populations that were firmly entrenched from Tuscany to
Apulia and were using Mousterian and Uluzzian technologies
(Kuhn and Bietti 2000). These criteria suggest that the techn-
ocomplexes were contemporaneous and that the Aurignacians
spread over the peninsula at 33–32 k.yr. BP as a result of the
penetration beyond a river frontier that was presumably co-
incident with the Po (Kuhn and Bietti 2000; Mussi 2001).
Delayed colonizations by modern humans might have been
induced by climatic and ecological factors, as in large zones
of the Iberian Peninsula at the beginning of Heinrich Event
4 (Zilha˜o 2000; D’Errico and Sa´nchez-Gon˜i 2003; Sepulchre
2007).
Various cultural evidence later than the Mousterian com-
plexes suggests that Uluzzians were in a process of modern-
ization, as indicated by larger lithic tool sets containing new
implements and also by early production of bone items and
the use of pierced mollusc shells (Palma di Cesnola 1989;
Gambassini 1997). Uluzzian lithic technology is characterized
mostly by unidirectional or bidirectional flake production

726 Current Anthropology Volume 49, Number 4, August 2008
Figure 1. Sketch map showing the position of the most relevant
Uluzzian sites in the Italian Peninsula (2, La Fabbrica; 3, Cas-
telcivita; 4, La Cala; 5, Grotta Bernardini, Grotta di Uluzzo, and
Grotta del Cavallo) and in Greece (6, Klisoura Cave) and the
extreme northernmost evidence at Fumane Cave (1), positioned
less than 300 km from the different cultural association found
at Vindija (7) in Croatia.
(Palma di Cesnola 1989) and multidirectional, polyhedric,
and discoidal cores. Blades and bladelets were produced as
well; not standardized, these products are short, sometimes
covered by cortex. Tools include burins, end scrapers, side
scrapers and denticulates, steeply retouched tools, and splin-
tered pieces. Other implements with curved or arched backs
are unusual in this context. Splintered pieces are prevalent in
some assemblages and not in others and were used as inter-
mediate objects to produce slits and to split bones and antlers.
Bone perforators made on atrophic metapodials have been
recovered at Grotta La Fabbrica and Grotta del Cavallo caves
(Pitti and Tozzi 1971; Palma di Cesnola 1989). Cylindrical
bone points with fractured bases have been interpreted as
rough throwing spears (Palma di Cesnola 1989). Perforated
marine shells, ochre, and limonite fragments complete the
cultural record. Taking the Grotta del Cavallo sequence as a
reference, the Uluzzian has been divided into lower, middle,
and upper periods of typological variability: semi-retouched
scrapers and denticulates are in the lower period, backed
pieces and splintered pieces are in the middle, and Aurigna-
cian-type products (see Gioia 1990) are in the upper. From
typological indexes, Palma di Cesnola (1989) argued that dif-
ferent facies can be identified in caves and open sites. Strat-
igraphic sequences show the Uluzzian possibly developed out
of some variety of late Denticulate Mousterian (Palma di
Cesnola 1989).
Although some authors produced a generalized description
of the Uluzzian, many assemblages, including some from key
stratified sites (Grotta La Fabbrica, Castelcivita), simply do
not fit well with the Grotta del Cavallo type of sequence (Kuhn
and Bietti 2000). The ambiguity of what exactly constitutes
this technocomplex is exacerbated by the fact that most of
the collections were recovered at the surface from unstratified
sites that had been subjected to mixing and perturbation. Data
on the chronology, diffusion and land-use patterns, lithic
economy, technology, and tool function are thus unavailable
or remain unstudied. In particular, chronology and regional
diffusion are two targets of crucial importance for depicting
where the cultural frontier was positioned during oxygen iso-
tope stage 3 (Broglio 1996; Kuhn and Bietti 2000; Mussi 2001;
Peresani 2006) and how it shifted in relation to the supposed
rapid spread of the Aurignacian along the Mediterranean
coastal belt and around the Great Adriatic Plain. Whereas the
Italian and Greek stratigraphic evidence demonstrates that the
Uluzzian systematically precedes the Aurignacian, radiocar-
bon data sets are still insufficient and, moreover, may be
affected by problems encountered for this specific time in-
terval (limits of the method, contamination, cosmogenic
events, calibration) that have been noted by various workers
(Voelker et al. 2000; Muscheler et al. 2005; Giaccio et al. 2006;
Hughen et al. 2006). So, if we accept the evidence that the
Uluzzian extends to the southeasternmost Balkan region, new
challenges may arise in investigations of its origin and dif-
fusion routes in the central Mediterranean Europe.
Uluzzian geographic isolation from the western regions is
proven by its absence in Liguria, Provence, and the Rhoˆne
Valley, where a patchy scenario with late Mousterian, “Ne`ro-
nien,” and proto-Aurignacian assemblages covers the time
interval in question (Palma di Cesnola 1989; Slimak 2007).
Conversely, looking east, affinities with some implements
from eastern Europe indicate less isolation (Palma di Cesnola
1996; Gambassini 1997). The recent discovery of remains of
human occupation embedded between the local final Mous-
terian and the proto-Aurignacian layers at Fumane Cave in
northeastern Italy may open new perspectives for recon-
structing the dynamics of the late Middle Paleolithic–early
Upper Paleolithic biocultural shift in the Northern Adriatic
(fig. 1), a geographically and biologically privileged region
during the Late Pleistocene. Closed by the Alpine chain to
the north and the displaced Adriatic coast, this area was a
corridor along which faunal migration waves (Sala and Mar-
chetti 2006) from the easternmost European regions occurred
and possibly in which humans were driven during that period.
The Uluzzian at Fumane Cave
Fumane Cave lies on the southern fringe of the Venetian Pre-
Alps at an altitude of 350 m between the low alluvial plains
and the summit of the Monti Lessini plateau. This site belongs
to a fossil complex karst system that is probably Tertiary in
age and comprises several cavities that variably contributed
to the formation of a sedimentary succession over 10 m thick.
Explored since 1988, this conspicuous cave-fill includes tens
of Middle and Upper Paleolithic levels with well-preserved
Mousterian and Aurignacian paleo–living floors and traces of