Lo sfruttamento delle risorse animali nel sito mesolitico di Galgenbuhel/Dos de la Forca, Salorno (BZ): la macrofauna.

The Early Mesolithic rockshelter at the Galgenbühel (225 m a.s.l.), a detritic cone at the valley bottom of the river Etsch/Adige at Salurn/Salorno (South Tyrol, Italy) has been excavated from 1999 to 2002 by the Monuments Office of the Province of Bozen/Bolzano. A few 14C- analyses date the about 2,5-meter-thick deposit to the 9th–8th millennium B.C. (calibrated age). According to the characteristics of flint industry the site can be ascribed to the middle Sauveterrien phase. Stratigraphy, with an alternation of anthropogenic and sterile layers, shows a repeated occupation of the site by mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups. Faunal remains attest an economy based on a contemporaneous exploitation of different environments. Among the large mammals ungulates are the most numerous (around 43% of the remains). These are are represented by woodland and alpine fauna, in the first place wild boar, red deer and chamois. Bones of ibex, which normally lives above timberline (at the time already at least at 2.000 m a.s.l.), are rare because of the noticeable distance to high-mountain environments. Aquatic resources of the near wetland were exploited very intensively by the inhabitants of the rockshelter: fish, freshwater molluscs, pond turtles and semi-aquatic mammals such as beaver and otter. On ground of the high frequency of Castor fiber, not only at Galgenbühel (around 39% of the remains) but also at the rockshelter Pradestel situated 18 km down the valley (layers L1-L4, middle Sauveterrien), we can assume that some hunter-gatherer groups of the area, maybe during seasonal exploitation of fish-grounds (from spring to autumn?), specialized in beaver hunting. Preliminary examitation of cut marks on bone material shows that Castor fiber as well as the fur bearing carnivores (wild cat, otter and pine marten, together around 14% of the remains) have been exploited for nutritional purposes but for their pelt as well.