Environment and hunting territories for Late Neanderthals in central Italy: new palaeoecological data from Grotta dei Santi (Monte Argentario – Tuscany, Italy)

The Italian peninsula is a key biogeographical region in southern Europe, which acted as a refugium for flora and fauna and favoured the persistence of human groups during the Late Pleistocene. This study uses pollen analysis of coprolites from the Late Mousterian site of Grotta dei Santi, (Monte Argentario Promontory, Tuscany, Italy), in which the Palaeolithic human presence is chronologically constrained between ̴ 48 and 44 ka BP. The vegetation landscapes during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 were reconstructed and compared with other palaeoenvironmental proxies from the same site. Palynological analyses revealed a semi-forested/forested environment within the Mediterranean landscape, with a relatively high diversity of woody taxa, including conifers, mesophytic angiosperms, elements of Mediterranean forest and of xerothermic scrub. The most remarkable result is the persistence of temperate climatic conditions throughout the studied sequence, even at the beginning of Greenland Stadial 12, as shown by both pollen and microfaunal records. This allowed the local maintenance of an unchanged availability of environmental resources. In this light, we assume that the definitive abandonment of the cave by Mousterian people cannot be linked to environmental stress. In other words, other factors must be taken into account to explain the possible demographic gap that seems to have occurred in the coastal area of southern Tuscany between the last Mousterian groups and the arrival of early modern humans at the nearby site of Grotta La Fabbrica. In a broader perspective, our work contributes to adding a new piece to the debate on the complex dynamics associated with the demise of Neanderthals in Europe.