Vestiges of the Sedimentary Archive of Late Paleolithic Inhumations from San Teodoro Cave: Insights into ST3 Burial and Site Stratigraphy

Studies of prehistoric burials are fundamental for understanding cultural human evolution. Those found in the San Teodoro cave (northeastern Sicily) are significant for the discovery at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s of at least four individuals (ST1–ST4). About 15–16 kyr ago, the bodies of ST1–ST4 were intentionally buried, apparently in a manner original to the context of prehistoric burials, namely by covering them with a continuous layer of red ochre found to connect the graves. Since the earliest excavations, plagued by clandestine digging, there is no material memory of the stratigraphic transition from the burial layer to the subsequent anthropogenic deposit through the red ochre, and nothing certain is known about the orientation of ST3, the presence of grave goods and the ochre cover related to this burial. Moreover, there is no exhaustive knowledge of how much is actually left of the anthropogenic layers described in the old literature. Based on field observations and 3D reconstruction of ST3’s skull position and deposits at the San Teodoro site, we provide insights into anthropological issues, such as the rediscovery of the red ochre vestiges that reasonably covered the ST3 burial, and the burial context of this individual, and shed light on what actually remains of the stratigraphic units described in the 1940s.