Oliena, Corbeddu Cave

The Corbeddu cave, located inside the Lanaittu valley, owes its name to the infamous Barbarian bandit Giovanni Corbeddu, who lived in the mid-19th century, who chose it as a refuge. It is an almost horizontal cavity, about 130 m long, divided into three main “rooms” and ending in a small room. Archaeological excavations have allowed the recovery of finds of considerable importance for the reconstruction of Sardinian history: it is in fact from this site that the first archaeological attestations that testify to the human presence in Sardinia in the Upper Paleolithic period, together with other finds perhaps classified as the Mesolithic period and attestations relating to the ancient Neolithic period. The finds that can be framed in the Upper Paleolithic period are a human temporal bone and a maxillary bone, both lying on the same level and belonging to the same individual, found in the second room. They can be dated, through radiocarbon analysis, to 13,500 years from the present (with a margin of error of 140 years).
Also in the second room of the cave, another unique human fossil remains have been recovered more recently, consisting of the proximal portion of the first phalanx of a hand, dated about 20,000 years from the present.
To this day, these finds are the oldest human remains found in an insular archaeological context in the Mediterranean. Another peculiarity consists in the fact that these bones have morphological characteristics that highlight a marked endemism compared to the other species of the genus “Homo” attested in Europe at that time.
From the same layer where the human bone remains were found, come fossils belonging to a small number of endemic wildlife species, the deer “Megaceros cazioti” and the rodent “Prolagus sardus”, both now extinct, in association with a few artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic. Also of particular importance is the discovery, made later at the bottom of the excavation section of the first room, of a proximal portion of a human ulna, assigned to an individual other than the one to whom the skull parts, which had been found in the second room, belonged.
Even this interesting bone fragment has a different morphology from that of “Homo sapiens” and appears to be characterized by an accentuated endemism.
Charcoal whips mixed with the bones of wild animals, with traces of fire, dating back to about 25,700 years from now, have also been found. Also significant is the discovery of bone and stone industries: scrapers, blades, burins, etc., in flint, quartz, marly limestone, dating between 14,500 and 12,000 years from the present. Finally, there are findings that can be traced back to the phases of the ancient and middle Neolithic.

History of the excavations
In 1967 Bruno Piredda, one of the founders of the “Nuoro Cave Group”, noticed the presence of bones in the cave of “Prolagus sardus”, a rodent the size of a rabbit, now extinct. In 1968, the American paleontologist Mary Dawson of the “Cornegie Museum” in Pittsburg (USA), having learned about the discovery, planned a scientific excavation campaign. In 1982, systematic excavations were undertaken in some rooms of the cave, under the direction of P.Y. Sondaar of the “Instituut voor Aardwetensc-happen e Rijksuniversiteit” in Utrecht (Holland), with the collaboration of the Superintendency of Antiquities of Sassari and Nuoro, represented by the archaeologist Mario Sanges. Excavations continued in 1983 and 1986.

Bibliography
E. Contu, La Sardegna preistorica e nuragica, I, La Sardegna prima dei nuraghi, Sassari, Chiarella, 1998;
G. Lilliu, La civiltà dei Sardi. Dal Paleolitico all'età dei nuraghi, Nuoro, Il Maestrale, 2004.

How to get there
The Corbeddu cave can be reached through a path that starts to the right of the entrance to the “Sa Oche” cave and goes up the mountain.