CNR ISPC co-host institution together with Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès for Dec.O project funded by Fyssen Foundation
The research project “Dec.O – Decorated objects of Romanelli Cave, a key site of the late Pleistocene-early Holocene Mediterranean area”, funded by the Fyssen Foundation, will be hosted by TRACES Laboratory, Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès in France and by CNR ISPC in Italy.
Funded by the Fyssen Foundation, the two-year research project Dec.O – Decorated objects of Romanelli Cave, a key site of the late Pleistocene-early Holocene Mediterranean area will be carried out by Dario Sigari thanks to a Post-doctoral study grant.
Dec.O will be hosted by two institutions that both supported the project: in France by the TRACES Laboratory of the Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès and in Italy by the CNR ISPC, branch of Rome.
Fieldwork activities will be undertaken in the Romanelli Cave (Puglia, Italy), in museums and other academic institutions.
Within the primary focus on portable art production of the site, Dec.O addresses the issue of cultural change, resilience and continuity after the Last Glacial Maximum-LGM (18-10 kya cal. BP) up to the early Holocene, when radical climatic and environmental changes occurred and the fisher-hunter-gatherer human societies started an important economic and social transformation towards a productive and resident system.
Dario Sigari is a prehistoric art archaeologist with an International Doctorate in Quaternary and Prehistory at the Universities of Tarragona (Spain) and Ferrara (Italy). He is a member of the ‘Grotta Romanelli’ project team, which has been carrying out archaeological fieldwork in the cave since 2015, under the coordination of Raffaele Sardella of the Sapienza University of Rome.
Since 2008 he has been involved in research and documentation fieldwork projects in Paspardo-Valcamonica coordinated by Angelo Eugenio Fossati of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan and International Federation of Rock Art Organisations (IFRAO) president. In addition, Dario is also the co-leader of an international archaeological project in Gobustan (Azerbaijan).
The project relies on a multidisciplinary integrated study of the portable art of Romanelli Cave, i.e. the systematic recording and techno-stylistic analysis of the portable art assemblages, together with archaeometric and petrographic analysis to characterize the raw materials and to precise the chrono-cultural attribution of the remains.
Dec.O will be carried out under the supervision of Camille Bourdier, associate professor at the Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, and Giulio Lucarini, researcher at the CNR ISPC.
