The Arene Candide Cave is a renowned site on the northwestern Italian coast that has yielded numerous burials dating back to the terminal phases of the Pleistocene (Epigravettian culture). Thanks to the exceptional preservation of the remains, and to the information collected during the excavations that begun in the 1940s, researchers were able to reconstruct a complex pattern of manipulation of older burials that consistently occurred when interring new individuals. Therefore, the Epigravettian necropolis provides a rare glimpse into the modalities, and possibly the motives, of funerary behavior in the Late Upper Paleolithic, a period during which formal burial was highly selective. The reasons for this selection are still unclear, but it has been proposed that they may be related to “exceptional events” (violence and trauma) and “exceptional people” (disease and deformities due to congenital conditions).

This study presents an assemblage of hundreds of skeletal elements and fragments belonging to two new individuals, and to individuals of the necropolis that were already known. The remains, which had never been described since their excavation in 1940–42, were discovered during the reassessment of the collections kept at the Museum of Natural History, Section of Anthropology and Ethnology of the University of Florence.

The analysis extends our knowledge of the biological profile of the individuals buried at the site, which is fundamental for our understanding of Late Upper Paleolithic funerary behavior. The inclusion of two new individuals in the skeletal series, both children aged around 1–1.5 years, suggests that age may have not been a significant factor in determining funerary treatment.

New radiocarbon dates on human bone – together with the cross-referencing of the available dates with the stratigraphic relations between burials and clusters of bones in secondary deposit – suggest that the entire necropolis is bracketed within a millennium corresponding to the Younger Dryas cooling event (i.e. between ca. 12,900 and 11,600 cal BP). Arene Candide Cave was a highly-visible landmark in the landscape, and funerary gestures in the Epigravettian necropolis emphasized the ties with the ancestors. It is possible that funerary behavior at Arene Candide was a means of claiming territorial access to resources, as well as reinforcing and transmitting communal identity and values, through a period of climate-induced resource stress and competition. Isolation and small refugia during cooling events may have contributed to exacerbating genetic drift, and increased the frequency of cultural means to sanction “exceptional people and events”.

Arene Candide 洞穴是意大利西北部海岸的一个著名景点，这里出土了许多可追溯到更新世（Epigravettian 文化）末期的墓葬。由于对遗骸的特殊保护，以及在 1940 年代开始的挖掘过程中收集到的信息，研究人员能够重建一种复杂的旧墓葬操作模式，这种模式在埋葬新人时始终如一。因此，Epigravettian 墓地提供了对旧石器时代晚期晚期葬礼行为的模式和可能动机的难得一瞥，在此期间正式埋葬是高度选择性的。这个选择的原因目前还不清楚，

这项研究展示了属于两个新个体和已知墓地个体的数百个骨骼元素和碎片的集合。这些遗骸自 1940-42 年发掘以来从未被描述过，是在重新评估保存在佛罗伦萨大学人类学和民族学部自然历史博物馆的藏品时发现的。

该分析扩展了我们对埋葬在该地点的个人的生物学特征的了解，这对于我们了解旧石器时代晚期的丧葬行为至关重要。在骨骼系列中包括两个新人，两个孩子的年龄都在 1-1.5 岁左右，这表明年龄可能不是决定葬礼处理的重要因素。

人类骨骼上新的放射性碳日期——连同可用日期与次生沉积物中墓葬和骨骼簇之间的地层关系的交叉参考——表明整个墓地都包含在对应于新仙女木冷却事件的千年内（即在大约 12,900 和 11,600 cal BP 之间）。Arene Candide Cave 是景观中一个非常显眼的地标，Epigravettian 墓地的葬礼手势强调了与祖先的联系。在气候引起的资源压力和竞争时期，Arene Candide 的葬礼行为可能是一种声称获得资源的领土权利，以及加强和传播公共身份和价值观的手段。