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Grotta Mora Cavorso is a multi-stratified site located in the inner Apennines in Central Italy. The archaeological deposit found in it spans from Upper Palaeolithic to World War II, and holds one of the largest Neolithic burial deposits currently known in Italy. This work will seek to analyse and interconnect all the pieces of evidence collected during ten years of multidisciplinary investigation at the site, in order to understand several aspects of this peculiar anthropized cave and the wider implications in the whole of the Italian and Mediterranean region, with a specific focus on Neolithic occupation. First of all, we will integrate the data coming from three distinct sectors of the cave which appear to have been used in different ways (Entrance Room for everyday-life activities, Intermediate Room for rituals and Inner Rooms for burials), in the attempt to understand the links between these spaces and to draw a complete picture of the life and death practices during the late 6th millennium BC at Grotta Mora Cavorso. Secondly, through the unique dataset of artefactual, ecofactual, molecular and geological data provided by this cave, we will explore the meaning of such practices in the early Neolithic of Italy and the Mediterranean basin. By combining the DNA, isotope, demographic and morphological data coming from the study of the 28 individuals buried in the cave, we will try to find out whether social selection was already occurring at the time. In addition, spatial studies will allow us to clarify if funerary rituals were disconnected from everyday life or if there was a conceptual and practical continuity between these two aspects of human life. As a final aim for this work, we intend to use Grotta Mora Cavorso and its archaeological potential as an example on how to successfully integrate science and social studies in archaeology, in order to reach deeper understandings of human behaviour in prehistory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caves are one of the most conservative environments on Earth, where archaeological, anthropological, climatic and tectonic data can be well-preserved. Here, we present the results of a multidisciplinary method that allowed us to recognize, for the first time in this area, the interaction between Late Pleistocene to Anthropocene neotectonic and archaeological evolutionary stages of a cave of the Apennines (La Sassa cave), that encompass also its surroundings (Volsci Range and Pontina Plain). Both structural and 3D survey highlighted a step-wise shape of the cave due to normal fault steps that allowed the localized formation of concretions also enveloping archaeological layers. Sixteen 14C ages on fauna and human bones and thousands of archaeological finds provided chronological constraints of faulting in the Late Pleistocene and possibly also after the Middle Bronze Age. In the frame of a region that was not previously recognized as tectonically active, the structural evidence is relevant for understanding the speleogenesis of the cave from the Late Pleistocene and its human occupation. Burial and ritual activities in the cave from the Copper Age to the Middle Bronze Age have been recognized with implications on possible settlement pattern schemes with the La Sassa cave as a "persistent place" in the prehistoric human landscape. The analyses of the ceramic style in a regional framework also suggests the presence of a cultural boundary near La Sassa, which becomes highly osmotic just after the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. The La Sassa findings provide as well implications for the seismic hazard assessment in a region inhabited by about 0.4 million people. • Neotectonic evolution is documented for the first time in Quaternary underground settings nearby Rome. • Structural evidence and dating constrain the speleogenesis of caves from the Late Pleistocene to their human occupation. • The cave was used as a funerary site in the Copper Age and Early Bronze Age and as a cultic place in the Middle Bronze Age. • In the Middle Bronze Age, funerary caves acted as "persistent places". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]