L’icnosito della località “Foresta” di Tora e Piccilli e le impronte umane fossili

Abstract

This report provides a complete description of the general “Ciampate del diavolo” palaeontological site (Tora e Piccilli, Central-Southern Italy) and each of the human ichnites there found so far. This description is integrated and completed with the tables, graphs, and pictures given in Supplements 1, 2, and 3 of this volume [Panarello et al., 2022a;b;c]. We think that this huge amount of both numeric and visual data will be very useful for any other human palaeoichnological study. Pictures and data show great variability in footprint structures due to the choices in the gait-patterns step-by-step imposed to the trackmakers by the geomorphological asperities that they had to face during their prehistoric walking along an irregularly plastic and unsafe substrate. The same complex morpho-structural characteristics of the footprints highlight the uniqueness of the ichnological context of the “Ciampate del diavolo” geosite, which is the only in the world, so far, to be located on an extremely steep volcanic deposit.