Late Neanderthals and their environment in northwestern Tuscany: news from Buca del Tasso

Buca del Tasso is a karst cave located in northern Tuscany in the southern Apuan Alps mountain range (10.338128E, 43.948155N WGS84; 465 a.s.l.). The cave was discovered in 1919 and completely excavated in the three following years (Stefanini et al. 1922). The original excavators found Pleistocene fauna in association with Mousterian artifacts. The stratigraphic succession consists of three main levels: Level A with abundant fauna and Mousterian industry, level B sterile, and level C with scarce fauna and Mousterian artifacts. Later, a more in-depth analysis of 90 the fauna assemblage showed the existence of a fragmentary human femur diaphysis attributed to a juvenile individual of H. neanderthalensis (Alciati et al. 2005). The fauna shows taxa typical of a mountain alpine range (C. ibex, M. marmota) and extinct taxa (U. spelaeus) or taxa more compatible with open steppe environments (S. kirchbergensis). Albeit no radiometric dating was available, comparison with nearby caves where Mousterian artifacts and Pleistocene fauna were found, suggested an age spanning the Riss-Wurm interglacial phases. The scarce lithic industry (7 artifacts in Level C and 37 in Level A) is linked with the Late Mousterian, characterized by the Levallois method to produce elongated blanks (Palma di Cesnola 1970). The accumulated faunal remains can be attributed to human input given the few carnivore remains. Two recent complementary research projects are re-investigating the significance of the site to compare it with the Apennine Peninsula late Pleistocene context. In this work, we present the site to the international community and new, important radiocarbon dating obtained on faunal remains from Level A and C. Level A returned a 40,2 ± 1,3 ka BP date while Level C is 48,0 ± 3,4 ka BP. According to the dating, we selected the climatic dataset using R package Pastclim, with a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.5° at intervals of 1,000 years (Leonardi et al. 2022). Findings pointed out that the temperature steadily declined towards the recent phase, but while the temperature was relatively mild at times of frequentation (Level A and C) there is a drop in temperature between the two periods, consistent with the sterile Level B. Findings at Buca del Tasso might highlight an area of late Neanderthal survival along the Ligurian-northern Tyrrhenian coast (Riel-Salvatore et al. 2022). References: Alciati, G., Delfno Pesce, V., & Vacca, E. (Eds.). (2005). Catalogue of Italian fossil human remains from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic. Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 83(Suppl.), 1–184. Leonardi, M., Hallett, E. Y., Beyer, R., Krapp, M., & Manica, A. (2022). pastclim: an R package to easily access and use paleoclimatic reconstructions Preprint. Evolutionary Biology. Palma di Cesnola, A. (1970). Cenni sui più antichi insediamenti umani della Alpi Apuane. Lavori Soc. Ital. Biogeogr., 1, 715–740. Riel-Salvatore, J., Negrino, F., Pothier Bouchard, G., Vallerand, A., Costa, S., & Benazzi, S. (2022). The ‘Semi-Sterile Mousterian’ of Riparo Bombrini: evidence of a late-lasting Neanderthal refugium in Liguria. Journal of Quaternary Science, 37(2), 268–282. Stefanini, G., Fabiani, R., Del Campana, D., & Puccioni, N. (1922). La ‘Buca del Tasso’ a Metato (Alpi Apuane) scavi del 1919, 1920 e 1922. Archivio per l’Etnologia e l’Antropologia, 52, 226–266