The human skeletal remains from Scaloria Cave

From the beginning of the 1978 excavations, it was clear that Scaloria was not only a burial site but also a place where complex and unusual rituals may have been practiced. Understanding burial rituals was a major focus of the 1978–1979 excavations, and the resulting human bone assemblage is central to any interpretation of the site. Knowing the importance of the human bone deposition, the excavators of the Upper Cave had osteologists on site for at least some of the dig (Robert I. Gilbert in 1978, János Nemeskéri in 1979). Although surviving field notes on bone deposits are minimal and some of the on-the-spot interpretations seem dubious today, some photographs of skeletal remains in situ are available, and much of the collection was carefully provenienced to trenches and levels. Although one would inevitably dig such a site differently today, the excavations have given us the information needed to reach new interpretations. The complex history of the Scaloria human bone assemblage has shaped how our analysis was conducted. The assemblage of human bones available for analysis has never been comprehensive, stable, or fully documented. Archaeological research at the cave has disturbed and excavated human remains on many occasions since Quagliati’s original investigations in the 1930s. A summary history of human skeletal material from the cave is thus: n Quagliati’s research in the 1930s appears to have discovered burials, and there is some indication that these consisted of articulated burials with grave goods dating to the Scaloria Alta and Serra d’Alto phases. But either Quagliati did not recover any of the skeletal material he observed (many excavations before the 1960s did not), or if any was retained, it has since been lost in the Taranto museum.