Contributo alla ricostruzione delle identità regionali e della differenziazione sociale presso i gruppi di cacciatori-raccoglitori paleo-mesolitici. Studio della ritualità funeraria in Italia e Francia e analisi degli isotopi stabili sul campione umano del versante alpino sud-orientale

The aim of this study is to provide a contribution to the reconstruction of the social organisation of human groups who occupied the Italian peninsula between the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene (30-6 kyr BP). The research focuses on burial contexts and employs two different methodologies. The first one concerns the study of the mortuary practices of hunter-gatherers in Italy during the Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic (78 burials, 89 individuals) and it includes the Mesolithic French sample (57 burials, 89 individuals) by comparison. The analysis of the variability of rituals allows to define a “funerary norm”; the identification of changes of this norm in time and space can infer transformations in the social and symbolical sphere of human groups. The application of this approach has thus allowed: (1) to recognise the appearance of ritual changes during the Late Epigravettian and the Mesolithic corresponding to the environmental and climatic transformations that occurred in the Late glacial and the Early Holocene; (2) to identify the presence of ethnic groups characterised by different rituals over the analysed territory; (3) to infer the persistence of local traditions along the time. The second method is based on stable isotope analysis (!13C, !15N) which was applied to the Epigravettian and Mesolithic human and faunal sample from the south-eastern Alps (Tagliente, Mezzocorona, Vatte di Zambana, Mondeval de Sora). The reconstruction of the ancient diet is a source of knowledge of the dietary proteins consumed by the individuals and therefore of subsistence strategies; it has therefore provided useful information about: (1) the adaptability of human subsistence strategies to local environmental conditions and to climatic changes; (2) the exclusion of marine resources from the diet of inland groups; (3) a different consumption of terrestrial and freshwater-derived protein by Mesolithic male and female individuals; as an hypothesis this difference can be connected to the different activities carried out by individuals or to the existence of food restrictions. The data obtained by the anaysis of mortuary practice and stable isotope analysis confirm the progressive reduction of the occupied areas and the subsequent regionalisation of the hunter-gatherers at the end of Pleistocene and the beginning of Holocene. This regionalisation is supposed to have an impact on the social organisation of human groups.