A submerged monolith in the Sicilian Channel (central Mediterranean
Sea): Evidence for Mesolithic human activity
Emanuele Lodolo a,⁎, Zvi Ben-Avrahamb,c
a Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS), Trieste, Italy
b Department of Earth Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel
c Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 26 April 2015
Received in revised form 1 July 2015
Accepted 4 July 2015
Available online xxxx
The ancient geography of theMediterranean Basinwas profoundly changed by the increase in sea level following
the Last Glacial Maximum. This global event has led to the retreat of the coastlines, especially in lowland areas
and shallow shelves, such as the Sicilian Channel. The NW sector of this shelf, known as Adventure Plateau, is
studded by isolated shoals mostly composed of Late Miocene carbonate rocks and by some volcanic edifices.
These shoals, until at least the Early Holocene, formed an archipelago of several islands separated by stretches
of extremely shallow sea. One of these submerged features – the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank – located 60 km
south of Sicily, has been extensively surveyed using geophysical and geological methods. It is composed of two
main shoals, connected seaward by a rectilinear ridge which encloses an embayment. Herewe present morphological
evidence, underwater observations, and results of petrographic analysis of a man-made, 12mlong monolith
resting on the sea-floor of the embayment at awater depth of 40 m. It is broken into two parts, and has three
regular holes: one at its endwhich passes through frompart to part, the others in two of its sides. The monolith is
composed of calcirudites of Late Pleistocene age, as determined from radiocarbon measurements conducted on
several shell fragments extracted from the rock samples. The same age and composition characterize the
metre-size blocks forming the rectilinear ridge. The rest of the rocks composing the shoals are mostly Tortonian
limestones–sandstones, as revealed by their fossil content. Extrapolating ages from the local sea level curve, we
infer that seawater inundated the inner lands at 9350 ± 200 year B.P., the upper limit which can be reasonably
taken for the site abandonment. This discovery provides evidence for a significant Mesolithic human activity in
the Sicilian Channel region.
© 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Un monolito di 12 metri di lunghezza, adagiato sul fondo del mare a circa 40 metri di profondità. Lo hanno trovato i sub nella zona del Canale di Sicilia grazie agli indizi raccolti dai geologi dell’OGS (Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale) di Trieste.
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