Reassessing the Mesolithic\Neolithic ‘gap’ in Southeast European cave sequences

Abstract

Radiocarbon sequences from some northern Mediterranean cave sites show a temporal gap between Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations. Some authors regard this as a regional phenomenon and have sought to explain it in terms of a general population decline in the late Mesolithic, which facilitated the replacement of indigenous foragers by immigrant farmers. New evidence from the rockshelter site of Mala Triglavca, in Slovenia, leads us to question this view. The results of AMS radiocarbon dating of samples recovered in excavations in the 1980s and associated soil/sediment analyses reveal evidence of substantial postdepositional disturbance of the cave sediments by human agency and geomorphological processes, which have created ‘temporal gaps’ and ‘inversions’ in the radiocarbon sequence and secondary deposits with residual finds.