New insights on Neanderthals at Fumane Cave

Nowadays, wine agriculture dominates the landscape all around Fumane, in the beautiful Valpolicella valley. However, during MIS (Marine Isotope Stage) 3, this area was a cold, unstable environment. Marine Isotope Stages are subdivisions of Earth's palaeoclimate (ancient climate). These periods, lasting thousands of years, are characterised by cold phases (named “stadials”) and warmer ones (named “interstadials”). Even though MIS 3 (60,000-27,000 years ago) is classified as an interstadial, at that time, the environment was far colder than today. Despite these harsh conditions, Neanderthal groups successfully occupied this landscape thanks to their deep knowledge of local resources and a precise mobility strategy. Situated at 350 metres above sea level within the Lessini Mountains (Veneto Prealps, north-east Italy), Fumane Cave represented a strategic site. Flint deposits embedded in the carbonate Lessini plateau were easily accessible, and immense biodiversity was compressed into just a few kilometres, ranging from the swampy lands of the Adige Valley to the grasslands just above the mixed forest surrounding the cave.

A recent paper by researcher Kalangi Rodrigo from the University of Oxford, alongside colleagues from the University of Ferrara and the MUSE museum, Trento, confirms the extraordinary behavioural plasticity of the Neanderthal groups who occupied the cave's surroundings between 47,600 and 44,800 years ago. During this time, sediments and deposits accumulated inside the cave, shaping what is nowadays known as “unit A9”, a part of the 12-metres-thick stratigraphy of Fumane Cave. In this work, a zooarchaeological study was carried out on the faunal remains from "tunnel B", a previously unexamined portion of the A9 unit assemblage. These newly collected data significantly enrich previous studies on the unit (Romandini et al., 2014).

The analysis reveals that ungulates are the most represented taxa within the assemblage, with red deer (Cervus elaphus) being the most dominant. The data show that carcass processing probably began directly at the kill site. There, Neanderthals left behind anatomical portions poor in meat and fat, such as the axial skeleton, while selectively bringing the highest-nutrient portions of the animal carcasses (limbs) to Fumane Cave, which most likely served as their residential area.

The occasional transport of skulls into the cave documents the acquisition of high-fat bearing elements like the brain and tongue, an exceptionally advantageous resource during colder climatic phases. Several anthropogenic modifications on the bone surfaces, such as cut marks, percussion damage, and fragmentation indicative of marrow extraction, reinforce the hypothesis of an accurate and targeted exploitation of faunal resources by Neanderthal people.

Ultimately, the study of these previously unexamined remains confirms that within this challenging environment, “Neanderthal foragers were sophisticated, behaviourally complex hunter-gatherers who structured their subsistence systems around high-utility carcass components, landscape constraints, and the energetic demands of Pleistocene environments” (Kalangi et al., 2026).