Arma Veirana 2022 Season Post 9: Museums

 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, and faunal material including the massive bones from a straight-tusked elephant.

     

         

     

After visiting the museum, we walked up to the imposing rock face to take a look into one of the caves, in which we could make out some faint etchings of a horse and vertical lines on the cave walls. The view along the coast continues to stun us, the brilliant blue water of the Mediterranean matches the blue of the sky. After visiting the museum, we now know how the landscape has shifted since Paleolithic times and can image waking up in one of these caves and being greeted by quite a different view from today's. The water's edge would have been pushed out further, exposing coastal plains on which people moved about. 


   

         

Our next excursion took us to the medieval town of Finale Ligure and their incredible archaeological museum featuring extensive exhibits from the Paleolithic to the Medieval time periods. Some of our favorites include: the cave bear, a recreation of a Neandertal family, Neolithic burials, Medieval tools and implements including scissors and an old book, and a collection of comparative hominin skulls. Our journey came full circle when we saw the exhibit about "Il Prince" from Arene Candide. 

  

  



Ciao!



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