Lecture at the SPHeritage project workshop entitled “Expanding our knowledge of prehistoric Eastern Adriatic mortuary practices”
Four hundred thousand years of human population responses to sea-level variations and climate change in the northwestern Mediterranean
The Mediterranean is a hotspot of climate change. Understanding how Paleolithic human populations responded to environmental changes and sea-level variations over the last 400,000 years enables us to preserve the cultural heritage of the past in order to plan for the future.
The SPHeritage project proposes a new interdisciplinary approach to studying how prehistoric human populations, the last Neanderthal populations and the earliest Homo sapiens, interacted with environmental variations, especially sea-level variations in the Ligurian-Provençal arc.
The project uses an original combination of modern micro-invasive geology techniques, paleontological and archaeological analyses, and a critical revision of stratigraphic sequences from previous research.
The archaeological area of Balzi Rossi, near Ventimiglia on the border between Italy and France, represents a unique opportunity to address this issue, as it is one of the most important sites of Paleolithic populations throughout the Mediterranean and also at the European level.
During interglacial periods, that is, during warm climatic phases, the coastal landscape of Balzi Rossi was similar to the present one. This is evidenced by erosion marks associated with bioencrustations and sandy coastal deposits containing marine fauna, visible in numerous caves at the site.
On the other hand, during cold climatic phases, when sea level was up to about one hundred meters lower than today, the now submerged coastal plain, up to 10 km wide, separated the coast from the Balzi Rossi cliffs.
In the deposits of continental sediments formed during glaciations and present in the caves, marine mollusks are found together with lithic industry artifacts. These mollusks were used both as food and as ornaments.
New analyses will make it possible to reconstruct the relationship Paleolithic human populations had with their environment and how changes in sea level altered their behavior and use of space.
The results will help us understand what could happen in the future under the predicted scenario of global climate warming and sea-level rise in the Mediterranean.