Three skeletons discovered more than a century ago in one of Italy’s most important prehistoric caves have turned out to be medieval. New radiocarbon dating has revealed that the remains, long believed to date from the Palaeolithic, actually belong to an adult and two infants who lived between the 14th and 15th centuries.
The findings come from Grotta Romanelli, a cave near Castro in Apulia, southern Italy, that has played an important role in the study of the Palaeolithic in the Mediterranean. The research, published in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences, reveals that the cave continued to be used thousands of years after its better-known prehistoric occupation.
“The new dates force us to look at Grotta Romanelli from a different perspective,” says Raffaele Sardella of the Department of Earth Sciences at Sapienza University of Rome, who has coordinated research at the site since 2015. “Until now, we had regarded it primarily as an extraordinary archive of the Palaeolithic; we are now discovering that its history is much longer and more complex.”
A 120-year-old archaeological mystery
The skull and mandible of Romanelli 1, an adult probably male who died between the ages of 30 and 40. Radiocarbon dating places the individual in the 14th or early 15th century. Photo: Museum of Anthropology, University of Naples Federico II.
Grotta Romanelli was first systematically investigated between 1900 and 1904 by local naturalist and painter Paolo Emilio Stasi, working with palaeontologist Ettore Regàlia. Their excavations uncovered stone tools, animal remains and human bones, helping establish the cave as an important site for the study of prehistoric southern Europe.
Among their discoveries were three burials: one containing a nearly complete adult skeleton and two containing partially preserved infant skeletons.
Stasi and Regàlia believed the burials belonged to the Late Upper Palaeolithic. The skeletons had been found within deposits known as the “Terre Brune” and appeared to be associated with hearths containing Pleistocene animal remains. The adult had been discovered about 1.2 metres below the cave floor, while the infants were found at a depth of about one metre.
Their interpretation was challenged almost immediately. Italian archaeologist Luigi Pigorini argued in 1904 that there was insufficient evidence to consider the burials Palaeolithic. He suggested that later graves could have intruded into older deposits and proposed that the remains might instead be Neolithic. The absence of grave goods made establishing their age even more difficult.
The question remained unresolved for more than a century. The three skeletons became part of the collections of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Naples Federico II after Stasi’s collection was acquired in 1914. Following periods of dispersal and relocation during the 20th century, the collection was rediscovered and reorganised in the 1990s, opening the way for renewed study.
“The remains, discovered in 1900 and transferred to Naples in 1914,” explains Maria Nicolaci of the Department of Biology and Biotechnology “Charles Darwin”, “can now be examined again using the most advanced dating techniques, providing new insights into the populations that inhabited the area. This is a concrete example of how historical collections can continue to generate data and knowledge.”
Three medieval burials
Archaeologists carrying out excavations inside Grotta Romanelli in Apulia, southern Italy. Research at the cave has revealed evidence of human activity spanning from the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages. Photo by Luca Forti.
Researchers have now directly dated rib samples from all three individuals using accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating. The results overturn their traditional prehistoric identification.
Romanelli 1, the adult, dates to either AD 1302–1369 or 1379–1411. The skeleton is nearly complete, and researchers estimate that the individual was probably male and between 30 and 40 years old at death.
The other two individuals were very young children. Romanelli 2, estimated to have been about nine months old, dates to AD 1423–1455. Romanelli 3 was approximately 18 months old and dates to AD 1435–1489.
The overlapping dates of the two infants mean that they could have been buried during the same period, but the researchers caution that radiocarbon dating cannot establish that the two burials occurred at the same time.
The discovery also does not mean that Grotta Romanelli lacks prehistoric human remains. Other human bones from the cave have been securely associated with its Palaeolithic occupation. A human rib fragment has been dated to 13,225–12,765 years before present, while a human hand bone was recovered during excavations in 2019 from deposits dating to the end of the Pleistocene.
Instead, the new results reveal that the cave had a much longer history of human use than previously recognised.
Why were people buried in the cave?
The dates place the three burials within different phases of medieval life around Castro.
Romanelli 1 broadly belongs to the Angevin period in southern Italy. The two infants lived during the 15th century, when Castro was connected to wider networks of exchange across the Adriatic. Exactly why the three individuals were buried inside Grotta Romanelli remains unknown.
One possibility considered by the researchers is epidemic disease. Their dates overlap with recurring outbreaks of plague in southern Italy during the later Middle Ages, and unusual or hurried burial practices are known from periods of crisis elsewhere in medieval Europe.
The researchers point to the roughly contemporary site of San Leonardo di Siponto, also in Apulia, where ancient DNA analysis has identified Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for plague, in medieval burials. At Grotta Romanelli, however, there is currently no direct evidence connecting the three individuals to an epidemic. The researchers stress that plague is only one possible explanation and say ancient DNA analysis could eventually test the idea.
Another dramatic event falls within the very end of the possible date range for Romanelli 3: the Ottoman assault on nearby Otranto in 1480. But the researchers caution against using this event as a general explanation for the burials. It occurred too late to account for Romanelli 1 or Romanelli 2 and is relevant only to the latest possible years represented by the date for Romanelli 3.
Many questions therefore remain, including whether other medieval people were buried in the cave and what biological evidence the skeletons might preserve about disease, trauma and living conditions.
The study transforms Grotta Romanelli from a site understood primarily through its prehistoric past into one with a complex history extending into the Middle Ages. Future analysis of the human remains may now help researchers understand why, thousands of years after prehistoric people first used the cave, medieval communities returned to it to bury their dead.
The study, “Direct radiocarbon dating reveals medieval reuse at the prehistoric site of Grotta Romanelli (Castro, Apulia, Italy),” by Raffaele Sardella, Maria Nicolaci, Lucia Borrelli, Ilaria Mazzini, Pierluigi Pieruccini, Alessia Galbusera, Alessio Iannucci, Giuseppe Lembo, Fabio Bona, Luca Forti, Lucio Calcagnile, Marisa D’Elia, Giorgio Carbone, Gianluca Quarta, Giorgio Manzi and Alessia Nava, is published in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences. Click here to read it.
Top Image: Grotta Romanelli, a prehistoric cave site near Castro in Apulia, southern Italy, where researchers have now identified evidence of medieval burials. Photo by Luca Forti.
Three skeletons discovered more than a century ago in one of Italy’s most important prehistoric caves have turned out to be medieval. New radiocarbon dating has revealed that the remains, long believed to date from the Palaeolithic, actually belong to an adult and two infants who lived between the 14th and 15th centuries.
The findings come from Grotta Romanelli, a cave near Castro in Apulia, southern Italy, that has played an important role in the study of the Palaeolithic in the Mediterranean. The research, published in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences, reveals that the cave continued to be used thousands of years after its better-known prehistoric occupation.
“The new dates force us to look at Grotta Romanelli from a different perspective,” says Raffaele Sardella of the Department of Earth Sciences at Sapienza University of Rome, who has coordinated research at the site since 2015. “Until now, we had regarded it primarily as an extraordinary archive of the Palaeolithic; we are now discovering that its history is much longer and more complex.”
A 120-year-old archaeological mystery
Grotta Romanelli was first systematically investigated between 1900 and 1904 by local naturalist and painter Paolo Emilio Stasi, working with palaeontologist Ettore Regàlia. Their excavations uncovered stone tools, animal remains and human bones, helping establish the cave as an important site for the study of prehistoric southern Europe.
Among their discoveries were three burials: one containing a nearly complete adult skeleton and two containing partially preserved infant skeletons.
Stasi and Regàlia believed the burials belonged to the Late Upper Palaeolithic. The skeletons had been found within deposits known as the “Terre Brune” and appeared to be associated with hearths containing Pleistocene animal remains. The adult had been discovered about 1.2 metres below the cave floor, while the infants were found at a depth of about one metre.
Their interpretation was challenged almost immediately. Italian archaeologist Luigi Pigorini argued in 1904 that there was insufficient evidence to consider the burials Palaeolithic. He suggested that later graves could have intruded into older deposits and proposed that the remains might instead be Neolithic. The absence of grave goods made establishing their age even more difficult.
The question remained unresolved for more than a century. The three skeletons became part of the collections of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Naples Federico II after Stasi’s collection was acquired in 1914. Following periods of dispersal and relocation during the 20th century, the collection was rediscovered and reorganised in the 1990s, opening the way for renewed study.
“The remains, discovered in 1900 and transferred to Naples in 1914,” explains Maria Nicolaci of the Department of Biology and Biotechnology “Charles Darwin”, “can now be examined again using the most advanced dating techniques, providing new insights into the populations that inhabited the area. This is a concrete example of how historical collections can continue to generate data and knowledge.”
Three medieval burials
Researchers have now directly dated rib samples from all three individuals using accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating. The results overturn their traditional prehistoric identification.
Romanelli 1, the adult, dates to either AD 1302–1369 or 1379–1411. The skeleton is nearly complete, and researchers estimate that the individual was probably male and between 30 and 40 years old at death.
The other two individuals were very young children. Romanelli 2, estimated to have been about nine months old, dates to AD 1423–1455. Romanelli 3 was approximately 18 months old and dates to AD 1435–1489.
The overlapping dates of the two infants mean that they could have been buried during the same period, but the researchers caution that radiocarbon dating cannot establish that the two burials occurred at the same time.
The discovery also does not mean that Grotta Romanelli lacks prehistoric human remains. Other human bones from the cave have been securely associated with its Palaeolithic occupation. A human rib fragment has been dated to 13,225–12,765 years before present, while a human hand bone was recovered during excavations in 2019 from deposits dating to the end of the Pleistocene.
Instead, the new results reveal that the cave had a much longer history of human use than previously recognised.
Why were people buried in the cave?
The dates place the three burials within different phases of medieval life around Castro.
Romanelli 1 broadly belongs to the Angevin period in southern Italy. The two infants lived during the 15th century, when Castro was connected to wider networks of exchange across the Adriatic. Exactly why the three individuals were buried inside Grotta Romanelli remains unknown.
One possibility considered by the researchers is epidemic disease. Their dates overlap with recurring outbreaks of plague in southern Italy during the later Middle Ages, and unusual or hurried burial practices are known from periods of crisis elsewhere in medieval Europe.
The researchers point to the roughly contemporary site of San Leonardo di Siponto, also in Apulia, where ancient DNA analysis has identified Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for plague, in medieval burials. At Grotta Romanelli, however, there is currently no direct evidence connecting the three individuals to an epidemic. The researchers stress that plague is only one possible explanation and say ancient DNA analysis could eventually test the idea.
Another dramatic event falls within the very end of the possible date range for Romanelli 3: the Ottoman assault on nearby Otranto in 1480. But the researchers caution against using this event as a general explanation for the burials. It occurred too late to account for Romanelli 1 or Romanelli 2 and is relevant only to the latest possible years represented by the date for Romanelli 3.
Many questions therefore remain, including whether other medieval people were buried in the cave and what biological evidence the skeletons might preserve about disease, trauma and living conditions.
The study transforms Grotta Romanelli from a site understood primarily through its prehistoric past into one with a complex history extending into the Middle Ages. Future analysis of the human remains may now help researchers understand why, thousands of years after prehistoric people first used the cave, medieval communities returned to it to bury their dead.
The study, “Direct radiocarbon dating reveals medieval reuse at the prehistoric site of Grotta Romanelli (Castro, Apulia, Italy),” by Raffaele Sardella, Maria Nicolaci, Lucia Borrelli, Ilaria Mazzini, Pierluigi Pieruccini, Alessia Galbusera, Alessio Iannucci, Giuseppe Lembo, Fabio Bona, Luca Forti, Lucio Calcagnile, Marisa D’Elia, Giorgio Carbone, Gianluca Quarta, Giorgio Manzi and Alessia Nava, is published in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences. Click here to read it.
Top Image: Grotta Romanelli, a prehistoric cave site near Castro in Apulia, southern Italy, where researchers have now identified evidence of medieval burials. Photo by Luca Forti.
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