Reconstructing past landscapes is crucial for archaeological research as it provides a framework for human activity in the landscape. This is especially important for understanding human subsistence during the Quaternary, when landscapes often differed substantially from modern analogues. Karst features, such as caves and rock shelters, can act as sediment traps and provide depositional archives that are often not preserved in open-air sites. This phenomenon is exemplified in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where stratified Palaeolithic sequences are currently best preserved at only two sites: the caves of Badanj and Podlipe (1, 2). Here, we draw on recent excavations at Podlipe, to investigate site formation processes and it’s implications for human activity and landscape change. Using primarily micromorphology, we provide a unified stratigraphy across the three excavation sectors, disentangle key taphonomic issues, and contextualize diachronic site use. We demonstrate that human activity developed around a rockshelter rather than a cave environment, with Epigravettian hunter-gatherers most probably utilizing a past river terrace of the nearby Bioštica river. This finding is in accordance with earlier evidence for the preference of river terraces for human subsistence during the later parts of the Upper Palaeolithic (3). Our case study concludes that micromorphology and site-formation processes can disentangle the preservation biases resulting from Quaternary deglaciation and sea-level rise, which are commonly observed across the Mediterranean.

First Author: Aristeidis Varis

Co-Authors: Аleksandar Jašarević, Panagiotis Karkanas, Sofija Dragosavac, Effrosyni Roditi, Jean-Luc Schwenninger, Dušan Mihailović, Katerina Harvati

Keywords:
Caves
Palaeolithic
Micromorphology
Site Formation Processes
River Terraces
Geoarchaeology