Re-examination of marine shells assemblage from Proto-Aurignacian of Grotta di Fumane, Italy. An atelier of jewellery.

The making and the use of personal ornaments is one of the main debates about the systematic human behaviour that occurred during the Upper Palaeolithic [1] and, in particular, shells beads complexes found in Aurignacian deposits play a key role. The Proto-Aurignacian levels of Fumane Cave (Northern Italy) [2] are a valid example in which it is possible to observe evidence of the main cultural symbolic features of European Anatomically Modern Humans [3]. The aim of this contribution is to improve data on the Aurignacian ethno-cultural diversity, as observed in the previous work [4], on the base of a large reexamination of the assemblages doing the taxonomical, palaaeoecological and taphonomical analyses. In fact, the Cave have yielded an extremely rich and varied collection of personal ornaments, composed of four grooved red deer incisors and over 900 shell beads that belong to 73 different taxa in total, 62 of which are representative of the class of Gastropoda, 10 of the class of Bivalvia and 1 of Scaphopoda. Direct AMS dating of perforated shells belonging to Homalopoma sanguineum, Nassarius circumcinctus, and Glycymeris insubrica are consistent with other 14C ages, obtained from the sedimentary units, and demonstrate that the shells were gathered on MIS3 beaches [5]. The collection is composed of unperforated and mostly perforated shells. A range of use-wear traces and ochre residues observed on well preserved perforation edges whit Leica S6D electronic binocular microscope and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), indicate that the shells were used as personal ornaments. The habitants of the cave chose smaller and most colourful species and Homalopoma sanguineum is indeed the most represented. Moreover, the analysis of spatial distribution of shells remains into the cave related to the taphonomical analyses, proves that the eastern zone of the cave entrance was probably used like a cache and like an atelier area, in which the habitants made their shells beads jewellery.