Holocene hydroclimatic variability and Neolithic to the Bronze Age human dynamics recorded in Grotta Battifratta cave (Rieti, central Italy)

Grotta Battifratta cave is a key archaeological cave located along a travertine escarpment in the Farfa Valley (Rieti, central Italy), within the middle Tiber catchment. Recent interdisciplinary investigations by Sapienza University of Rome have documented a well-preserved stratigraphic succession spanning from the Middle Palaeolithic to the post-Medieval period, with particularly detailed evidence for Neolithic and Bronze Age activity at the cave entrance. This study integrates archaeological excavation with sedimentological, micromorphological, geochemical, mineralogical, micropalaeontological and radiocarbon analyses to reconstruct the Holocene cave infill and its links to human use. Neolithic deposits (end of the 6th–beginning of the 5th millennium BCE) accumulated through short-lived depositional and erosional events driven by alternating slope stability, surface runoff and episodic karst reactivation. Bronze Age evidence is more spatially restricted and reflects episodic use, likely linked to pastoral practices, during a phase of hydrological reorganisation of the karst system followed by low-energy carbonate sedimentation. Post-Medieval ceramics in the uppermost deposits provide a terminus post quem for final infilling, which falls within the Little Ice Age phase of hydroclimatic instability. Overall, Grotta Battifratta cave shows how Holocene cave deposits record the intertwined effects of environmental processes and human activities, providing a geoarchaeological archive of human-karst landscape interactions in inland central Italy.