Grotta di Fumane (Fumane in Valpolicella, VR)

The Fumane cave in the Monti Lessini Region (Northern Italy) bears witness of one of the most important Middle and Upper Paleolithic archaeological records in Europe. After the first investigation of the site carried out in 1964, since 1988 excavation campaigns are regularly organized every year. This karst complex preserves a 12m thick sedimentary sequence composed of four macro-units: S, BR, A and D which record the main climatic events occurred throughout the Late Pleistocene, and a cultural sequence with repeated human frequentations and a variable density of cultural remains. Traces of much more intense human occupations have been inferred from the macro-unit A record. This latter show evidence of Mousterian living floors with hearths in A11, A10, A9, A6-A5, A4, Uluzzians in A3, Protoaurignacian in A2-A1 and in macro-unit D, and Gravettians in D1d, where human traces become sporadic. A huge amount of cultural and biological remains allows to reconstruct with sharp details an ensemble of abrupt changes in human biology and behaviour during some of the key phases of the latest Middle Palaeolithic and the early Upper Palaeolithic.