
Francesco BernaSimon Fraser University · Department of Archaeology
Francesco Berna
PhD
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101
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Introduction
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October 2006 - September 2009
January 2013 - present
Publications
Publications (101)
Identifying communal rituals in the Paleolithic is of scientific importance, as it reflects
the expression of collective identity and the maintenance of group cohesion. This study
provides evidence indicating the practice of deep cave collective rituals in the Levant
during the Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) period. It is demonstrated that these gat...
Identifying communal rituals in the Paleolithic is of scientific importance, as it reflects the expression of collective identity and the maintenance of group cohesion. This study provides evidence indicating the practice of deep cave collective rituals in the Levant during the Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) period. It is demonstrated that these gat...
Lime-based materials are found in archaeological contexts across many world regions. The earliest evidence of lime production was discovered in the Levant dating to about 16,000 cal BP. Methods for transforming limestone, shells, and corals into slaked lime varied depending on region, culture, and period. Similarly, the use of lime had an extensive...
Pyrotechnological activities leave many traces in the archaeological record, most notably ash, which is the powdery residue of the combustion of organics such as wood. These traces have provided important insights into the biological and cultural evolution of humans. Given the common occurrence of ash layers at archaeological sites, the charred rem...
Humans evolved in the dynamic landscapes of Africa under conditions of pronounced climatic, geological and environmental change during the past 7 million years. This book brings together detailed records of the paleontological and archaeological sites in Africa that provide the basic evidence for understanding the environments in which we evolved....
This study aimed to examine the degradation of juvenile skeletal remains with respect to adult counterparts from different burial settings in Milan, Italy. A multiscale and multimodal approach was applied to investigate bone diagenesis by combining chemical and mineralogical analyses with synchrotron radiation-based virtual histology. Certain diffe...
Manot Cave contains important human fossils and archaeological assemblages related to the origin and dispersal of anatomically modern humans and the Upper Paleolithic period. This record is divided between an elevated in situ occupation area and a connecting talus. We, thus, investigated the interplay between the accumulation of the sediments and t...
Although the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa, associated with major cultural innovation including aspects of symbolic behavior and the development of complex hunting tools, has been the focus of intensive research, well-documented contexts for the early Middle Stone Age (EMSA) are rare. Here, we present archeological and ecological data o...
Renewed excavations at the Neolithic site of Beisamoun (Upper Jordan Valley, Israel) has resulted in the discovery of the earliest occurrence of an intentional cremation in the Near East directly dated to 7031–6700 cal BC (Pre-Pottery Neolithic C, also known as Final PPNB, which spans ca. 7100–6400 cal BC). The funerary treatment involved in situ c...
Radiocarbon ( ¹⁴ C) dating of anthropogenic carbonates (CaCO 3 ) such as ash, lime plaster and lime mortar, has proven a difficult task due to the occurrence of a number of contaminants embedded within the CaCO 3 pyrogenic binder. These include ¹⁴ C-free geologic components and/or secondary phases bearing an unknown amount of ¹⁴ C, and thus the alt...
For more than a century, prehistoric research has focused on cave sites and rock shelters, mostly because of good preservation of organic remains associated with stratified anthropogenic layers. Manot Cave in the Western Galilee, Israel offers the possibility of studying prehistoric assemblages in pristine condition because of the collapse of the c...
A well-preserved sequence of Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) occupations has been revealed in the past decade in Manot Cave, the studies of which shed light on the cultural dynamics and subsistence patterns and paleoenvironment. Most intriguing is the series of overlying Levantine Aurignacian occupation layers, exposed near the entrance to the cave....
Ceramic kilns are an indispensable part of the study of ceramic technology. Studies on the construction and maintenance of ancient ceramic kilns are mostly based on field observations during excavation. Here we report on the micromorphological study of a Late Helladic updraft ceramic kiln from the archeological site of Kolonna, Aegina Island, Greec...
In addition to differential culture-specific burial practices, the relative absence of juvenile skeletal remains in historic cemetery excavations has been explained by a comparatively rapid breakdown of immature bone. While the idea of differing breakdown rates between immature and mature bone is widely accepted, few experiments have provided evide...
Hominin fire use in the early Pleistocene has been debated since the early 1970s when consolidated reddened sediment patches were identified at FxJj20 East and Main, Koobi Fora, Kenya. Since then, researchers have argued for evidence of early Pleistocene fire use at a handful of archaeological sites with evidence of combustion. Some argue that morp...
The Cornelia-Uitzoek fossil site has produced a large collection of bones, Acheulean artifacts and a Homo sp. tooth dated to ~1 million years ago. The faunal assemblage defines the Cornelian Land Mammal Age and is characterized by a number of extinct species of large mammals that reflect an open grassland environment. Bones were accumulated by hyen...
Short-lived occupation sites are the most common component of the archaeological record at the regional scale level, but are often underrepresented due to their low amount of cultural material and greater visibility of larger sites. Small ephemeral sites can however provide unique information regarding land and resource use, travel routes, harvesti...
Infrared absorption spectroscopy is a versatile analytical method that can identify different compounds in archaeological materials and sediments by measuring the portions of the infrared spectrum absorbed by specific molecules. This technique was developed in the 1930s for the characterization of industrial materials, and then applied to the study...
Stratigraphic Unit 13 of Oscurusciuto Rockshelter (Ginosa, Taranto, Southern Italy) is a short Mousterian palimpsest representing the first stable occupation of the site soon after the deposition of a thick layer of tephra (Mt. Epomeo Green Tuff - Ischia datable around 55 kya BP). Different activities were identified by integrating the study of lit...
The timing of archeological industries in the Levant is central for understanding the spread of modern humans with Upper Paleolithic traditions. We report a high-resolution radiocarbon chronology for Early Upper Paleolithic industries (Early Ahmarian and Levantine Aurignacian) from the newly excavated site of Manot Cave, Israel. The dates confirm t...
Dung has been a very important material in human history. To date, large portions of the world rural population continue using it as construction material, fuel, and fertilizer. A few ethnographic and archeological studies show that dung has also been used for ritual practices in domestic and sacred places. Nevertheless, finding unambiguous evidenc...
The term Concotto refers to fragments or patches of hard heated clay that derive from living surfaces, walls, and ovens. Concotto fragments are found throughout the Italian peninsula and date from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Current studies express contradictory opinions about whether or not the Concottos on living surfaces represent intentional...
he Florisbad spring site has produced a large collection of fossil bones dating back to the Middle Pleistocene and several assemblages of Middle Stone Age (MSA) artifacts. The species featured in the faunal collection define the Florisian Land Mammal Age, characterized mainly by grazing ungulates that reflect an open grassland environment. Early MS...
Some scholars explain the major anatomical characteristics that differentiate Homo erectus from its predecessor, Homo habilis, as the result of Homo erectus being adapted to use fire for cooking and other tasks. However, many scholars contend that the evidence of fire in Homo erectus sites is very scant and is not convincingly anthropogenic. This s...
The Florisbad spring site has produced a large collection of fossil bones dating to the Middle Pleistocene and several assemblages of Middle Stone Age (MSA) artifacts. The species featured in the faunal collection define the Florisian Land Mammal Age, characterized mainly by grazing ungulates that reflect an open grassland environment. Early MSA ar...
Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar overlooking the Río Quípar, a Río Segura tributary, is an upland rock-shelter 75 km north of the Mediterranean coast and 110 km west of the Segura river-mouth. It contains undisturbed sediment 5 m deep assigned by magnetostratigraphy to >0.78 Ma (Matuyama magnetochron). Optically stimulated sediment luminesce...
Control of fire was a hallmark of developing human cognition and an essential technology for the colonisation of cooler latitudes. In Europe, the earliest evidence comes from recent work at the site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del RIo Quípar in south-eastern Spain. Charred and calcined bone and thermally altered chert were recovered from a deep, 0....
The Oscurusciuto rock shelter, located in the ravine of Ginosa (Taranto), is one of the key sites for the study of Neanderthal groups in Southern Italy. The rich stratigraphic sequence of the site, which is ascribable entirely to the Middle Palaeolithic, is rich in anthropic remains and combustion structures, attesting occupation by Neanderthals du...
The Middle to Late Pleistocene spring site of Florisbad, South Africa, is the name site of the Florisian Land Mammal Age (LMA), and it has produced a large collection of fossil bones from different sedimentary contexts. The largest of these faunal assemblages derives from vertically intrusive dormant spring vents and is taphonomically distinct from...
The archaeological site of Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia, has produced some of the most important hominin and faunal skeletal remains dating back to nearly 1.8 Million years ago. Here we present a chemical and mineralogical characterization performed in order to understand the geochemical mechanism(s) that lead to the exceptional state of bone prese...
Geoarchaeological research at the Middle Pleistocene site of Schöningen 13 II-4, often referred to as the Speerhorizont, has focused on describing and evaluating the depositional contexts of the well-known wooden spears, butchered horses, and stone tools. These finds were recovered from the transitional contact between a lacustrine marl and an over...
The Earlier Stone Age (ESA) sequence of Excavation 1 at Wonderwerk Cave is the longest stratified sedimentary sequence associated with hominin occupation in Southern Africa. This sequence has been constrained chronologically on the basis of cosmogenic burial age and paleomagnetic dating. Geoarchaeological analysis of two exposed profiles covering s...
A key event in human evolution is the expansion of modern humans of African origin across Eurasia between 60 and 40 thousand years (kyr) before present (bp), replacing all other forms of hominins. Owing to the scarcity of human fossils from this period, these ancestors of all present-day non-African modern populations remain largely enigmatic. Here...
This trip through SW British Columbia focuses on past and ongoing land movements and flood events, and archaeological sites likely affected by these events. Our route follows a varied terrain of landforms inhabited for millennia by First Nations.
The Lower to Middle Paleolithic transition (~400,000 to 200,000 years ago) is marked by technical, behavioral, and anatomical
changes among hominin populations throughout Africa and Eurasia. The replacement of bifacial stone tools, such as handaxes,
by tools made on flakes detached from Levallois cores documents the most important conceptual shift...
The site of Beisamoun is located on the western side of the marshes of the former Hula Lake in the upper Jordan Valley,
in the northern part of the Southern Levant. It is known as a major Middle and Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B settlement
from excavations and surveys undertaken by A. Assaf, J. Perrot and M. Lechevallier and colleagues up to the 197...
The sedimentary sequence at Diepkloof Rock Shelter formed through a complex interaction of depositional and post-depositional processes and was variously influenced by biogenic, geogenic, and anthropogenic agents. Here, we present the results of a micromorphological study of the sediments at Diepkloof, focusing in particular on the numerous anthrop...
Past research on Madagascar indicates that village communities were established about AD 500 by people of both Indonesian and East African heritage. Evidence of earlier visits is scattered and contentious. Recent archaeological excavations in northern Madagascar provide evidence of occupational sites with microlithic stone technologies related to f...
Excavations of a kitchen at Escalera al Cielo in the Puuc Maya region of Yucatán, Mexico uncovered a concentration of fired clay balls (ca. 3–5 cm in diameter), in addition to other de facto domestic refuse. The kitchen pertains to an intensively excavated elite residential group that was rapidly abandoned sometime near the end of the Terminal Clas...
Our ongoing research has revealed that Manot Cave was intensively occupied during the Upper Palaeolithic period. Located within the Mediterranean woodland region and with its multi-layered units and thick archaeological accumulations, Manot Cave has the potential of refining the Levantine Upper Palaeolithic cultural sequence. This is especially tru...
The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provid...
Pyrotechnology must be seen as one of the most important technological developments in human prehistory. Once developed it eventually came to serve a wide range of applications, but when this actually occurred is not well understood. Fire is well known at a number of Middle Palaeolithic sites in Western Europe, and the Neandertals of this region cl...
Kebara Cave (Mount Carmel, Israel) exhibits extensive use of fire by Neanderthals in the Middle Paleolithic. Phytoliths are abundant, indicating that plants were common in the cave. In addition, micromorphological analyses of archaeological deposits furnish precise contextual background to the phytolith analysis, and provide constraints on how phyt...