Snow, born 10.000 years ago – Arma Veirana (SV)

Snow, born 10.000 years ago – Arma Veirana (SV)
Illustration by Alessandra de Nardis

di Alessandra de Nardis

The finding in Arma Veirana of AVH-1, a newly renamed newborn Neve by archaeologists, it took place inside a long-studied cave in the Ligurian Pre-Alps in the province of Savona; the analyzes of amelogenin, a protein present in tooth buds and the results of which were recently published in the Scientific Reports, allow us to connect emotionally on a group of humans from the first phase of the Mesolithic; a small body of just 40 days decorated with a rich grave goods made up of over 60 beads in pierced shells Columbella rustica, four pendants, always perforated obtained from fragments of bivalves Glycimeris glycimeris and an eagle owl claw.

The Arma Veirana cave in the Neva Valley is a cavity about forty meters long and with a curious hut shape. Here, the bones of Neve, a Sapiens newborn who lived about ten thousand years ago and died just a few days old, were found in fragments that still contained DNA. The first occupation of the cave dates back to 50.000 years ago, by Neanderthal man. Subsequently, the Sapiens settled (ph. ©Dominique Meyer)

The discovery of what is effectively the first European burial belonging to a newborn 10.000 years ago reveals a hunter-gatherer society that buried a newborn member of the clan with the utmost care, thus allowing us to investigate an ancient rite and on the behavioral and symbolic aspects associated with it.

The bone remains found, the skull cap, part of the scapula and humerus, part of the ribs and thoracic vertebrae, indicate that the body was in a supine position, the head facing west and the feet facing east; the development of the teeth, in addition to having provided the age of death, revealed episodes of stress that affected the fetus or the mother about 47 and 28 days before birth, perhaps due to lack of food that affected the regular development of the fetus.

Burial layout. (A) Progressive 3D photogrammetric image of each piece prior to removal, reconstructing the bones and artifacts as they were in situ. (B) Tracing with inset demonstrating the likely body position. Movie S1 shows a fly-through of a full 3D photogrammetric model of Arma Veirana (created by coauthors DM, DD, and FK), and an interactive 3D model of the cave is available online: .

Neve was richly adorned: a line of shell beads and three pendants recovered over the right shoulder and upper chest region suggests that these were sewn onto a hood and 20 of the shells of Columbella rustica they covered the abdominal region, perhaps encircling the waist and bust. Most of the shells show significant signs of wear which suggests their prolonged use such as having been worn; the girl therefore received the shells from the members of the clan as funerary equipment.

Small monovalve shells and bivalve pendants (note the holes for use as pendants) placed as funeral equipment for the little girl (ph. J. Hodgkins et al., 2021)
From: An infant burial from Arma Veirana in northwestern Italy provides insights into funerary practices and female personhood in early Mesolithic Europe

The remains of the little body were therefore wrapped in an object, perhaps a leather hood, on which the same types of shells that are found on the “headphones” from the Gravettian period, the typical headdresses covered in red ocher placed on the skulls of some skeletons and mostly belonging to female individuals; the Paleolithic Gravettian culture spread from 29.000 to 20.000 years ago is the one to which many of the best known Ladies of the Paleolithic belong, they too often portrayed with the same type of hood and therefore a good 10,000 years before Neve's burial.

Even if the burials inside a place like the cave where Neve was found can be connected to the relationship between the community and its usual territory and the concrete presence of the ancestors would strengthen the reference to the lineage and the continuity of occupation, it remains to be evaluate if the ritual that looks the same and that has been preserved for thousands of years can provide us with the symbolic meaning related to the cult object found on Neve; can it perhaps have a particular meaning that Neve was a child, a small female wearing for her journey to the afterlife the same special equipment reserved for the Ladies of the Paleolithic?

What did this shell and red ocher garment represent to simulate the blood that accompanied the deceased? A wish for rebirth? A simple weather erosion protection? A shamanic object that allowed you to stay in touch with the living? A sign of belonging to a priestly class? Whatever the answer, there is no doubt that each shell, due to its mineral composition, is an extremely durable object, linked to water, easily supplies food and its spirals recall the spirals that mark the eternal return of time which is not linear in nature but spiral; also true that the small ones Columbella rustica they can be easily joined together to form a beautiful object to wear. It is also true that the shell is not the animal itself but only a protection to which the animal that inhabits it is connected. The analyzes obtained from the dental gems have highlighted the diet of the mother who ate meat but not fishing or molluscs, refuting the hypothesis that the shells represented a food waste. These communes Columbella rustica they were therefore a precious object, which had to be found, worked on for a long time and which perhaps was used as an exchange between communities or a sign of belonging, even spiritual;

Could this "vestment" represent a "dress" of the afterlife? Could it be proof that these humans believed in rebirth and that the body, the head in particular, represented the sacred place par excellence of their identity to be preserved? Or was Snow just yet another little victim of the case to be given the task of messenger to be sent to the underworld to be delegated protection and care?

Neve brought us endless questions but the conclusion reached by the group of researchers who commented in an interview that "Understanding the cultural and behavioral significance allows us to investigate an exceptional funerary rite from the first phase of the Mesolithic, an era of which few burials are known, and testifies how all the members of the community, even the little newborns, were recognized as fully title and apparently enjoyed equal treatment…” is not the correct classification because egalitarian treatment was certainly not a “prize” for Neve rather we should ask ourselves why the skeletons of individuals belonging to the male gender, as well as very rare except for a few rare exceptions yet to be proven, have never equipped with headphones.
This would be a different way for once to look at the world.

The team continues to dig; we await the other analyses.

For a virtual tour of the cave the team has made a video reconstruction in 3D

A photographic reportage of the excavations

Alessandra de Nardis – 2022


REFERENCES

  1. Jamie Hodgkins, Caley M. Orr, Claudine Gravel-Miguel, Julien Riel-Salvatore, Christopher E. Miller, Luca Bondioli, Alessia Nava, Federico Lugli, Sahra Talamo, Mateja Hajdinjak, Emanuela Cristiani, Matteo Romandini, Dominique Meyer, Danylo Drohobytsky, Falko Kuester, Geneviève Pothier-Bouchard, Michael Buckley, Lucia Mancini, Fabio Baruffaldi, Sara Silvestrini, Simona Arrighi, Hannah M. Keller, Rocío Belén Griggs, Marco Peresani, David S. Strait, Stefano Benazzi and Fabio Negrino – “An infant burial from Arma Veirana in northwestern Italy provides insights into funerary practices and female personhood in early Mesolithic Europe” – in Scientific Reports – no. 11 – 2021.
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