Giovanni Boschian

The main topic of my research work is the study of humans-environment interactions during the prehistory and in the deep past, in terms of behavioural/cultural adaptations to environmental change. I work mostly -even if not exclusively- on cave sites and their formation processes, applying geoarchaeological and soil micromorphological techniques to the study of natural and anthropogenic sediments.
I have been studying for some years the reaction of Mediterranean environment and populations to cold phases, in areas not directly influenced by ice cover. This aspect concerns also the substitution of Neandertals by Ancient Modern Humans, which is well documented in some sites I am working on in Italy (Riparo Mochi, Grotta dei Santi) and in Croatia (Romualdova Pećina). To this purpose, I started collaborating with Croatian colleagues in excavations with Neandertal and Ancient Modern Humans remains in the western Balkans, in order to extend the study area.
Another aspect of my research is cave use and land exploitation from the Neolithic onwards in Central and North-eastern Italy and in the Balkans region. The rapid spread of pastoralism is a socioeconomic aspect that strongly affected neolithisation processes in southern Europe. Cave sites are particularly interesting because they preserve for long time evident traces of stabled animals and can be used as proxies of human activity.
I have been working for some years in Georgia, together with local colleagues and the Shida-Kartli and Lagodeki Venice University research team. The focus of the project is the Late Calcholithic-Early Bronze Age culture Kura-Araxes, still largely unknown. We are carrying on surveys, test excavations in selected sites and an extensive project of radiocarbon datings. Within this project I am mainly studying the organisation of domestic and proto-urban spaces by micromorphological techniques.
In 2010 I also started working in South Africa on the ancient hominin site of Drimolen, mostly on stratigraphic problems and site formation processes, collaborating to the dating of the site and to the reconstruction of Paranthropus robustus behaviour. In more recent times I also started working at Amanzi Springs, in the Eastern Cape, about the same topics.
In 2015 I participated in the excavation and study of the new footprint track found at Laetoli (Tanzania), close to the historical site found by M. Leakey in 1976, together with colleagues of the University of Dar es-Salaam and of the School of Palaeoanthropology of the University of Perugia. Unfortunately, the project, which included further excavations and conservation studies on the site, has been stopped for administrative and political issues. However, these circumstances fostered new collaboration with the same group and we intensified the activity at Olduvai Gorge, where I am now co-directing new excavations started in 2018 in the Naisiusiu Beds at Locality 83.
Other research themes are Lower to Upper Palaeolithic human adaptations to environmental change; food and raw material procurement strategies, mobility. Upper Palaeolithic site use and lithic technology. Flint quarrying techniques, flaking, and intra-site organisation of the activity areas.