Settling a no-mans land. An up-dated rewiev on the peopling of northern Italy at the Last Glacial Maximum

Human occupation during the Last Glacial Maximum at the margins of and across the Great Adriatic Plain between Italy and the Western Balkans is an open question. Only a handful of archaeological sites compose a patchy archaeological record resulting, to some extent, in a lack of visibility of the peopling of the plain itself. A wide range of data from different sources are assimilated here to support the reconstruction of the physical and ecological settings. Contact between groups across the area is suggested by similarities in the chert and lithic industries in north-eastern and central-eastern Italy, Slovenia and Istria. On the north-eastern margin of the Po valley, in the Berici Hills, a string of caves and rockshelters with minimal archaeological remains have yielded lithic assemblages dominated by backed and/or shouldered projectile points. Fire-places, typological imbalance and impact-scars consistently suggest short-lived campsites and a restricted set of activities. Hunting parties focused on cave bears and possibly contributed to their population decline until extinction, in combination with climatic deterioration and resource competition. These sites may be all that is left of a complex settlement system, which once possibly stretched all over the plain, with centrally located sites now deeply buried, submerged and out of reach.