An excavation earlier this year of the Pertosa-Auletta Caves in the province of Salerno, southern Italy, unearthed thousands of artifacts, including an extremely rare Bronze Age chisel with its wooden handle still intact and attached.
The Pertosa-Auletta Caves is the only cave system in Italy with a navigable river, and visitors are taken on guided tours by boat to an underground waterfall and the Great Hall, an enormous chamber 80 feet high. There is evidence of human occupation of the cave going back 8,000 years. The presence of the river has preserved organic materials in the cave, and previous excavations unearthed a prehistoric pile dwelling from the 2nd millennium B.C., a unique example on the European archaeological record of a pile house built in a subterranean environment.
Many of the artifacts recovered in the most recent campaign had a ritual purpose. Archaeologists identified coins, ornaments, unguent vessels, incense burners, sculpted figures and burned plant remains as deposits for an important cult structure built in the Hellenistic era (4th-1st century B.C.) in the underground riverbed. Among the notable objects found in the sacred area were a large piece of precious amber and a terracotta sculpture of a female head. They also found an extension of the 3,500-year-old pile dwelling.
The January-February excavation was part of a new three-year campaign that is scheduled to resume next month. For the first time, high school students will participate in the fieldwork thanks to a work training program that will give them the very special opportunity to learn about speleo-archaeological processes first-hand.
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