Isernia La Pineta (south-central Italy, Molise) is one of the most important archaeological localities of the Middle Pleistocene in Western Europe. It is an extensive open-air site with abundant lithic industry and faunal remains distributed across four stratified archaeosurfaces that have been found in two sectors of the excavation (3c, 3a, 3s10 in sect. I; 3a in sect. II). The prehistoric attendance was close to a wet environment, with a series of small waterfalls and lakes associated to calcareous tufa deposits. An isolated human deciduous incisor (labelled IS42) was discovered in 2014 within the archaeological level 3 coll (overlying layer 3a) that, according to new 40Ar/39Ar measurements, is dated to about 583–561 ka, i.e. to the end of marine isotope stage (MIS) 15. Thus, the tooth is currently the oldest human fossil specimen in Italy; it is an important addition to the scanty European fossil record of the Middle Pleistocene, being associated with a lithic assemblage of local raw materials (flint and limestone) characterized by the absence of handaxes and reduction strategies primarily aimed at the production of small/medium-sized flakes. The faunal assemblage is dominated by ungulates often bearing cut marks. Combining chronology with the archaeological evidence, Isernia La Pineta exhibits a delay in the appearance of handaxes with respect to other European Palaeolithic sites of the Middle Pleistocene. Interestingly, this observation matches the persistence of archaic morphological features shown by the human calvarium from the Middle Pleistocene site of Ceprano, not far from Isernia (south-central Italy, Latium). In this perspective, our analysis is aimed to evaluate morphological features occurring in IS42.
Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy;Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy;Dipartimento di Biologia, Laboratorio di Antropologia, Università di Firenze, Firenze, Italy;Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy;Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de L’Environnement UMR 8212, IPSL-CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Gif sur Yvette, France;Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy;Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de L’Environnement UMR 8212, IPSL-CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Gif sur Yvette, France;Ecole française de Rome, Rome, Italy;UMR 7194 – Département de Préhistoire du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France;UMR 7194 – Département de Préhistoire du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France;UMR 7194 – Département de Préhistoire du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France;Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy;Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy;Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy;Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy;Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy;Université Bordeaux 1, UMR 5199 PACEA-PPP, Talence, France;Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy;Dipartimento di Fisica e Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy;Dipartimento di Scienze Fisica, della Terra e dell’Ambiente, Siena, Italy;Dipartimento Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, LT, TekneHub, Ferrara, Italy
Recommended Citation:
Carlo Peretto,Julie Arnaud,Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi,et al. A Human Deciduous Tooth and New 40Ar/39Ar Dating Results from the Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Site of Isernia La Pineta, Southern Italy[J]. PLOS ONE,2015-01-01,10(10)