Stratigraphy, sedimentology, and site formation at Konispol Cave, Southwest Albania

Recent geoarchaeological investigations at Konispol Cave (Epirus), Albania concluded nearly a decade of interdisciplinary human ecological investigations. Questions of site formation, cave history, and environmental change were examined through microstratigraphic study and sedimentological analysis. Artifacts and occupation layers from Upper Paleolithic through Iron Age times were preserved in three discrete sediment complexes. Sedimentology supplemented by micromorphology isolated the principal characteristics of the sediment complexes. The chronology and site formation history was characterized sequentially by: (1) initial deposition and/or pedogenesis of basal sediment; (2) sheetflow, spring discharge, and ponding in the cavern; (3) rockfall, roof attrition, and solution weathering; (4) episodic flushing and reworking of allogenic sediment; (5) human activities; (6) autogenic reworking and diagenesis of human debris and slope sediment. The changing history of the cave is linked to regional paleoenvironmental and land use signals in Epirus and the greater Aegean from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the late Holocene.