Apidima Caves: Their Significance for Human Evolution in Europe and New Research by the NIA

The lecture by Prof. Harvati and Dr. Tourloukis will take place on Thursday, 25 May 2023, at 7:00 p.m. (Athens) at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, Tsami Karatasou 5, 11742 (the lecture will also be streamed online via Zoom)

Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.

To attend in-person or via Zoom, please register via the relevant link.

About the Speakers

Prof. Katerina Harvati* is Professor for Paleoanthropology at the Institute of Archaeological Sciences, and Director of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. Her research focuses on Pleistocene human evolution, with special emphasis on Neanderthal paleobiology, on modern human origins and dispersals, and on the paleoanthropology of South-East Europe. Her broader interests include primate evolution and life history; the settlement of the Americas; and on understanding the evolutionary processes underlying human skeletal variation. She is a pioneer of the application of virtual anthropology methods to paleoanthropology.
Prof. Harvati is President of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution (ESHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the diamond open access journal PaleoAnthropology.

Prof. Harvati is President of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution (ESHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the diamond open access journal PaleoAnthropology.

Among her many distinctions, in 2021 she was awarded with the highest academic distinction in Germany, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz prize; and in 2014 with the Research Award of the state of Baden-Württemberg. She was elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2022.

Prof. Harvati is the recipient of three ERC grants: ERC Starting Grant PaGE (2012-16); ERC Consolidator Grant CROSSROADS (2017-22); and ERC Advanced Grant FIRSTSTEPS (2022-28). In the framework of these projects, she has been conducting an extensive research program in Greece. She directs the DFG Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Words, Bones, Genes, Tools: Tracking linguistic, cultural and biological trajectories of the human past’ together with Prof. Jäger. She has (co)directed fieldwork in Europe and Africa since 2006.
Since 2020, Harvati is also Professor II at the Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), University of Bergen, Norway.
Currently, she directs the archaeological, palaeoanthropological and geological investigations of the five-year research project (2022-2026) at the Apidima cave complex in Mani, southern Greece, together with Dr. Tourloukis. This research is conducted by the Norwegian Institute in Athens and funded through her ERC Advanced grant FIRSTSTEPS.

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Tourloukis (PhD & MA, Leiden University) works as Senior Researcher (Adjunct Professor) in the Palaeoanthropology Working Group, Institute for Archaeological Sciences, University of Tübingen, and he has recently been appointed to a professorship at the University of Ioannina, Greece. Dr. Tourloukis has a broad training in Prehistoric Archaeology and his research focuses on the Palaeolithic period, lithic technology and geoarchaeology.

He has been awarded research grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG, 2021-2024), the Volkswagen Foundation (2019), the Wenner Gren Foundation (2015-2016) and the State Scholarschip Foundation of Greece (2005-2008).

Dr. Tourloukis has extensive experience as co-director of field research and lithic analyst in several survey projects and excavations in Greece and Turkey. Since 2012, he has been (co-)directing the excavations and surveys conducted in the framework of the ERC projects PaGE (2012-2016) and CROSSROADS (2017-2022), where he was responsible for designing the research methodology, coordinating the field and laboratory analyses of the cultural material, and contextualizing the chronological and paleoenvironmental data. At present, he is involved as research collaborator in the ERC-funded project FIRSTSTEPS (PI: Prof. K. Harvati). Dr. Tourloukis has co-directed and/or participated in more than 25 research projects of archaeological surveys and excavations in Greece (Epirus, Macedonia, Thessaly, Peloponnese, Crete, Ionian Islands). Currently, together with Prof. K. Harvati, he directs the archaeological, palaeoanthropological and geological investigations of the five-year research project (2022-2026) at the Apidima cave complex in Mani, southern Greece.

In the study of prehistoric cultural remains, Dr. Tourloukis investigates the evolutionary dynamics between early human technology, subsistence strategies and environmental settings. His research interests include the evolution of the human niche, the role and social dimensions of prehistoric technology in early human behavior, and the socio-economic and ecological contexts of hominin behavioral diversity.

About the Lecture

The Apidima cave complex, located on the coast of the Mani peninsula, is one of the most significant paleoanthropological sites in South-East Europe. It was investigated by a team from the University of Athens Museum of Anthropology in the late 1970s and -80s, yielding two fossil human crania from Cave A, a possible Upper Paleolithic burial, lithic artifacts, and personal ornaments from Cave C, as well as fossilized faunal and other remains (e.g., Pitsios 1999). Despite their importance, the Apidima remains remained poorly studied due to poor preservation and taphonomic distortion and breakage, lack of associated context and difficulties in dating. A recent reinvestigation of the fossil crania from Cave A led by Prof. Harvati indicated the presence of an early Homo sapiens population at the site as early as >210 thousand years ago, the earliest such instance currently known in Eurasia; followed by a Neanderthal population by >170 thousand years ago (Harvati et al. 2019), underscoring the significance of the site.

Given the site’s importance, a 5-year program of field investigation was undertaken by the Norwegian Institute in Athens, led by Prof. Harvati (University of Tübingen and University of Bergen) and Dr. Tourloukis (University of Tübingen). This research aims to investigate the chronology, site formation processes, as well as further paleoanthropological and paleolithic evidence from the cave complex. Work started in 2022 and the first season focused on securing safe access to the site itself and to all the caves of the complex; on developing a three-dimensional excavation grid; and conducting geoarchaeological assessment of the cave sediments and limited cleaning of surfaces.

The presentation will focus on the previous paleoanthropological and chronological investigation of the human remains from Caves A and C, as well as on the work conducted in the 2022 season and present the first results.

References:
Harvati, K., Röding, C., Bosman, A., Karakostis, F.,A., Grün R., Stringer, C., Karkanas, P., Thompson, N.,C., Koutoulidis, V., Moulopoulos, L.,A., Gorgoulis, V.,G., Kouloukoussa, M.
2019. Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia. Nature 571, 500-504
Pitsios, T. (1999). Paleoanthropological research at the cave site of Apidima and the surrounding region (South Peloponnese, Greece). Anthropologischer Anzeiger 57, 1–11.

* Also: Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), University of Bergen; DFG Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Words, Bones, Genes, Tools’, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen; Museum of Anthropology, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens