Environnements et occupations paléolithiques d'Italie centrale: la longue séquence pléistocène moyen de Valle Giumentina - Ambiente e occupazioni paleolitiche in Italia centrale : la lunga sequenza del pleistocene medio di Valle Giumentina

An integrated multidisciplinary study (sedimentology, géochemistry, micromorphology, biomarker analysis, geochrono- logy and tephrochronology) was undertaken on the sedimentary in ll of the Valle Giumentina basin (Abruzzo, Italy). In the 1950s an outstanding archaeological sequence, composed of nine human occupation levels ascribed to Acheulean eand Clactonian, was discovered inside this continental succession, 45m deep. Since then, the site is a reference for the de nition of the Italian and European Lower Palaeolithic. This study depicts an evolution of the Valle Giumentina ba- sin in four phases during the Middle Pleistocene, on a time span comprised between 600 and 400 ka, corresponding to MIS15-MIS12. The comparison with the contemporaneous palaeoenvironmental archives highlights that Valle Giumenti- na is a high-precision record and that its evolution is close to the East-Mediterranean sites. The new chronostratigraphic framework built by our results allows to precise the chronology of each archaeological level and to reconstruct the envi- ronmental context of the Palaeolithic human occupations.