Grotta della Lea, a new Early Epigravettian site in southern Italy (Uluzzo Bay)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• Grotta della Lea: New Palaeolithic site in Uluzzo Bay. • Shouldered lithic bladelets and points. • Early Epigravettian occupation. • Pottery fragments and greenstone axe from the Copper Age. • Exploitation of Equus and large bovids in the Epigravettian. Grotta della Lea, discovered in the 1970s, is located in the Municipality of Nardò (LE), southern Italy, and has been systematically investigated only in recent years. This cave remains an untouched environment, ideal for the application of modern analytical methodologies from the beginning of its excavation. Its unexplored status, combined with its proximity to other significant Palaeolithic sites such as Grotta del Cavallo and Grotta-Riparo di Uluzzo C, renders it a promising site for our understanding of the Palaeolithic in Italy. Earliest results from the initial four years of investigations at Grotta della Lea brought to light both Upper Palaeolithic and Copper-Bronze Age human occupations. This paper is aimed at presenting Grotta della Lea for the first time, focusing on preliminary information about the site formation processes, the characteristics of the stratigraphic succession, and the establishment of both relative and absolute chronologies according to the initial results of a comprehensive AMS radiocarbon dating programme. Central to this research is also the analysis of pottery and lithic artefacts as well as the taphonomic and taxonomic assessment of macro mammal remains. The study of the lithic industry from the Palaeolithic deposit highlighted the production of shouldered backed bladelets and points on high-quality chert, which are typologically and technologically indicative of an advanced phase of the Early Epigravettian. This attribution is corroborated by radiocarbon dating between 21,821–18,281 cal. BP, aligning with the timeline for the Early Epigravettian in Italy. In the Palaeolithic occupation, the large mammal association revealed an abundance of equids and large bovids, along with several carnivore, leporid, turtle and bird remains. Taphonomic analysis highlighted the occurrence of butchery marks, but also some carnivore activity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".