Geochronological investigations for Lower Palaeolithic archaeological sites from Basilicata: comparison with the Vulture’s tephrostratigraphy
Résumé
The occurrences of Lower Palaeolithic testimonies are very sporadic during the first part of the Middle Pleistocene in Western Europe making the understanding of the appearance and dispersion of the « Acheulean culture » in this territory very challenging. The Basilicata region located in the Southern part of the Italian peninsula appears as a key study area to improve the current knowledges regarding the pre-neanderthalian lineage evolution in Western Europe. Indeed, several archaeological sites, including various human occupations levels older than 500 ka, are found in a quite restrictive geographic area (less than 15 km2) which is rare for this timescale. Among these sites, two of them are presented here: Notarchirico found in the Venosa sedimentary basin and Cimitero di Atella found in the Atella sedimentary basin. Thanks to the continuous explosive volcanic activity of the Monte Vulture volcanic complex during the Middle Pleistocene period that is located less than 10 km from both sites, the majority of the deposits of this eruptive complex were drained in neighboring sedimentary basins. The Venosa and Atella basins are thus infilled with fluvio-lacustrine deposits rich in primary (tephra, pyroclastic flows) and reworked volcanic deposits. Their infillings have been tentatively correlated to the Vulture tephrostratigraphy (Lefèvre et al., 2010) and propose here to improve these correlations thanks to a robust geochronological work. The geological characteristics of these deposits allow indeed the combine use of the 40Ar/39Ar and ESR on bleached quartz dating technics for both sites (Raynal et al., 1998, Giannandrea et al., 2006; Lefèvre and al., 2010, Pereira et al., 2015).