Late Pleistocene artists in caves: The figurative portable art of Grotta Romanelli (southern Italy)

With more than 200 decorated objects made on stone and bone, Romanelli Cave has one of the richest records of Palaeolithic portable art of Italy. However, this incredible heritage is only partially edited and the last systematic research work dates back to more than fifty years.Thanks to the resumption of the investigation activities in the cave, new attention has been rekindled to the study of the portable art objects found in previous historical excavations and dispersed among several institutions in Italy, and the newly discovered engraved objects, which provide crucial information having a precise stratigraphic position.The decorated objects reveal a variety of raw materials (stone and bone), and diversities in the represented themes (zoomorphic, geometric, anthropomorphic), and decorating techniques (scratching with different tools and or points, and painting). According to the reports from the old excavations, they were found in the uppermost stratigraphic units filling the cave (ISU5), containing Upper Palaeolithic lithic and bone tools, and numerous faunal remains, and recently dated between 13.6 cal ka BP and 11.4 cal ka BP.At this stage of the research, we selected the rock fragments decorated with figurative themes (zoomorphic and anthropomorphic subjects), analysing: a) the style of the figures and their technological features to investigate changes over time; b) their stratigraphic setting and related chronology; c) the lithology and petrology of the raw material to understand its origin in terms of source-area and the post- or pre-burial weathering processes. The palaeontological analysis supplies further supporting data to identify the animal figures, giving possible connections between the environment surrounding the site and the graphic production. Finally, comparisons with Late Pleistocene portable and parietal art from other Mediterranean sites provide the essential information to propose potential cultural connections at large scale