Innovative method for provenance studies in cultural heritage: A new algorithm based on observables from high-resolution Raman spectra of red ochre.

Red ochre, typically derived from iron oxides and hematite, has been used since Pleistocene times for a range of different applications, practical as well as symbolic, including cave paintings and use in prehistoric burials. The importance to discover new methods for provenance determination, based on non-destructive portable techniques, represents a new challenge in the field of diagnostics of cultural heritage. This study presents the data obtained from the analysis of several non-flaked tools and ochre-stained bones, showing evidence of ochre processing at the Mesolithic site of S'omu e S'Orku in Sardinia (Italy).

The Pleistocene high-elevation environments between 2.02 and 0.6 Ma at Melka Kunture (Upper Awash Valley, Ethiopia) based upon stable isotope analysis.

Pleistocene environments are among the most studied issues in paleoecology and human evolution research in eastern Africa. Many data have been recorded from archaeological sites located at low and medium elevations (≤ 1500 m), whereas few contexts are known at 2000 m and above. Here, we present a substantial isotopic study from Melka Kunture, a complex of prehistoric sites located at 2000-2200 m above sea level in the central Ethiopian highlands.

Early lived at high altitudes and produced both Oldowan and Acheulean tools.

In Africa, the scarcity of hominin remains found in direct association with stone tools has hindered attempts to link and with particular lithic industries. The infant mandible discovered in level E at Garba IV (Melka Kunture) on the highlands of Ethiopia is critical to this issue due to its direct association with an Oldowan lithic industry. Here, we use synchrotron imaging to examine the internal morphology of the unerupted permanent dentition and confirm its identification as .

A surge in obsidian exploitation more than 1.2 million years ago at Simbiro III (Melka Kunture, Upper Awash, Ethiopia).

Pleistocene archaeology records the changing behaviour and capacities of early hominins. These behavioural changes, for example, to stone tools, are commonly linked to environmental constraints. It has been argued that, in earlier times, multiple activities of everyday life were all uniformly conducted at the same spot.

Technological insights on the Early-Middle Bronze Age pottery of Monte Meana cave (Sardinia, Italy).

An important Bronze Age settlement was discovered during an archaeological excavation in the Monte Meana karst cave in south-western Sardinia (Italy) between 2007 and 2012. In this region, the caves were used since the Neolithic for different purposes, such as burials or other rituals. The dig highlighted a rare example of domestic use of a cave and showed a case study of household space of the Early -Middle Bronze Age, at the beginning of the Nuragic civilization.

Insights into the palaeobiology of an early Homo infant: multidisciplinary investigation of the GAR IVE hemi-mandible, Melka Kunture, Ethiopia.

Childhood is an ontogenetic stage unique to the modern human life history pattern. It enables the still dependent infants to achieve an extended rapid brain growth, slow somatic maturation, while benefitting from provisioning, transitional feeding, and protection from other group members. This tipping point in the evolution of human ontogeny likely emerged from early Homo.

Archaeology and ichnology at Gombore II-2, Melka Kunture, Ethiopia: everyday life of a mixed-age hominin group 700,000 years ago.

We report the occurrence at 0.7 million years (Ma) of an ichnological assemblage at Gombore II-2, which is one of several archaeological sites at Melka Kunture in the upper Awash Valley of Ethiopia, 2000 m asl. Adults and children potentially as young as 12 months old left tracks in a silty substrate on the shore of a body of water where ungulates, as well as other mammals and birds, congregated.