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Palaeolithic art at Grotta di Cala dei Genovesi, Sicily: a new chronology for mobiliary and parietal depictions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2018

Gianpiero di Maida ,
Marcos García-Diez ,
Andreas Pastoors  and
Thomas Terberger
Gianpiero di Maida*
Affiliation:
Graduate School Human Development in Landscape, Leibnizstraße 3, D-24118 Kiel, Germany Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology, Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, Johanna-Mestorf-Straße 2–6, D-24118 Kiel, Germany
Marcos García-Diez
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Calle de Francisco Tomás y Valiente s/n, 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Universidad Isabel I, Calle de Fernán González 76, 09003 Burgos, Spain
Andreas Pastoors
Affiliation:
Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Kochstraße 4/18, D-91054 Erlangen, Germany
Thomas Terberger
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeological Heritage, Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Scharnhorststraße 1, 30175 Hannover, Germany
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: gianpiero.dimaida@gmail.com)
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Abstract

Unusually for a Palaeolithic cave, the Grotta di Cala dei Genovesi on the island of Levanzo, off the west coast of Sicily, Italy, has yielded evidence of both parietal and mobiliary art. Developments in dating techniques since the excavations of the 1950s now allow the age of the mobiliary art—an engraved aurochs—to be determined. At the same time, stylistic comparison of the parietal art at Grotta di Cala dei Genovesi with other broadly contemporaneous sites that demonstrate well-documented cave art allows a relative chronology to be proposed. The two methods taken together enable a direct chronological comparison to be made between the production of parietal and mobiliary art at this important cave site.

Keywords

ItalySicilyPalaeolithicartstyledatingchronology
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 92 , Issue 361 , February 2018 , pp. 38 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2018 

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