New geoarchaeological investigation at the Balzi Rossi archaeological area (Ventimiglia, Italy): the contribution of the SPHeritage Project

The main topic of the SPHeritage Project (MUR grant: FIRS2019_00040, P.I.: M. Pappalardo) is an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the human-environment interaction over the last 400,000 years in the Balzi Rossi archaeological area of northern Italy. The well-known archaeological area of ​​the Balzi Rossi represents a unique assemblage of archaeological sites dating to the Palaeolithic, distributed in a geomorphological setting rich of markers of past sea level changes. Moreover, since the Pleistocene the area was a hot spot for climate change and human migrations, thus offering the opportunity to investigate how human populations have responded to past environmental changes and sea level variations. As most of the local archaeological sequences have been extensively investigated at the beginning of the last century and large part of the deposits removed, we will combine the analyses of materials preserved in museums (including undisturbed blocks of archaeological sediments) and the remnants still preserved inside many rockshelters of the archaeological complex. Our approach combines a territorial geomorphological survey and mapping and the application of state-of-the-art geoarchaeological methods to archaeological sequences to disclose the complexity of the human-environmental nexus in the area.