Innovative and traditional aspects of the Uluzzian technology at Fumane cave.

The Middle - Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe was a period of dramatic changes in human behaviour as a consequence of processes mostly related to the spread of Anatomically Modern Humans and the demise of native archaic humans. The origin and the significance of these changes are the subject of an intense debate, which also involves the material record, represented by different technocomplexes constrained to specific regions or diffused at larger scale. Out of these technocomplexes, the Uluzzian has recently been considered crucial for investigating the social organization and the subsistence strategies of the Modern Human population. The same regions of the Mediterranean Europe were after occupied by the Aurignacian population, and characterised by new repertoire of bone and lithic artefacts. In last years, several studies have increased our understanding of the chronology, taxonomy, material culture and subsistence of the Uluzzian in Italy (Benazzi et al., 2012; d’Errico et al., 2011; Ronchitelli et al., 2009; Higham, 2011; Riel-Salvatore, 2007) and Greece (Kaczanowska, 2010), and generated debate (Bietti and Negrino, 2007). Yet, more data are required especially from material culture, which reveals an ensemble of innovations in stone and bone technologies. Persistence in flake production, increase in the incidence of blade-bladelet making, and appearance of new types of implements characterise Uluzzian flint knapping whereas new formal tools define bone technology. The social significance of such technological improvements should be assessed on a wider, supraregional scale, through a comparison with older, contemporaneous and younger technocomplexes. The authors present new data from the Uluzzian sequence of Fumane cave in Northern Italy with the aim of reducing the current patchiness of data about Uluzzian technology (Peresani, 2008). Fumane still represents an isolated case with regards to the central and southern regions of the peninsula. Our arguments concern the persistence and variability in the Levallois flake making, the substitution of this method by others, the progressive use of new tools, the shift in the functional design of tools, the appearance of few worked bones. As it is still statistically impossible to distinguish the chronology of the oldest Uluzzian at Fumane from the southern sites, we discuss the impact produced by these first changes and innovations.