ESR/U-series chronology of the Lower Palaeolithic palaeoanthropological site of Visogliano, Trieste, Italy

The Visogliano shelter, in north-eastern Italy, is an important Middle Pleistocene occupation site where human remains were found together with an archaic lithic industry, including choppers, chopping tools and a few protobifaces. It is of utmost importance to try to document this period, when a second wave of settlement colonised Western Europe, carrying new flaking techniques and tools. Combined ESR/U-series analyses, integrated with biostratigraphical and environmental data, define a chronological frame for the layers from which the artefacts were unearthed. The lower levels, including human remains, can be dated to the 350-500 kyr time span, in agreement with micromammal and stratigraphical studies. These data make Visogliano one of the oldest palaeoanthropological sites in Italy, where human remains are directly associated with protobifaces, choppers and chopping tools. In Western Europe, Visogliano is contemporaneous to the G soil of the Arago Cave, France, with which it shares several similarities in faunal assemblages and radiometric data, and which contains human remains also. These data make Visogliano as one of the oldest sites in Europe where the Acheulian culture is observed. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.