ArmaVeirana 2022

 Ciao! Well, we've reached the end of our time here and our final blog post. It's hard to believe over a month has passed since we first arrived, it feels like time moves differently in this little corner of Italy. This past week, we students completed a preliminary analysis of the Mousterian layers of the cave and thousands of faunal specimens from 6 different stratigraphic aggregates. Some questions of interest were: which animals are represented in highest frequency and how does this differ between the layers? Where are the most densely butchered bones found? So far it is evident that bovids and cervids and long-bone elements were present and butchered the most. Also of interest to us was that each layer contained bear bones, except for one. The data and analyses will help drive future research questions and excavations to increase our knowledge and understanding of the habitation and use of Arma Veirana by Neandertals, modern humans, and other animals.   One of the mo...

 We have officially finished coding all the faunal material and are working on preliminary analyses to get an overview of the Arma Veirana site and faunal specimens. Questions we are interested in asking are: What are the differences in the assemblages in each stratigraphic layer? What animals are represented and what skeletal elements make up the majority of each assemblage? What can this tell us about hominin use of the cave? While working on data analysis, we are also enjoying our final days in this special part of the world. We've had the privelege of traveling along the coast and visiting two fantastic museums. The first, the Museum of Prehistory at Balzi Rossi, is situated right along a massive cliff face that houses several paleolithic cave sites. An enthusiastic tour guide showed us around the museum, pointing out significant finds such as the skeletal remains of a female individual ("La Donna") who up until a decade ago was mislabeled as male, Mousterian lithics,...

Ciao friends! We have been hard at work in the lab this past week getting the final faunal remains coded into our system for further analysis, which we will begin shortly. The work has been extremely rewarding and humbling, looking through thousands of small animal bone fragments for hints of human and Neandertal influence such as cut marks and fire. As we continue to build our relationship with the local landscape and people, it becomes even more evident that this valley must have been a place of beauty, serenity, and shelter for ancient peoples and animals of all kinds for a long time. The sense of place is strong and it is easy to see why. We took two days off so Jamie, Caley, and Noor could travel to Nice to bring Nonna Deb to the airport, who graciously and with much energy provided 4 year-old Noor with entertainment and care for three weeks.  Now Noor plays sweetly in the lab while we work, entertaining us with her fantastic imagination 😊 During our two days off, we student...