Stratigraphy, sedimentology, and archaeology of Middle Pleistocene localities near Ceprano, Campogrande area, Italy Italo Biddittu a , Marie-Hélène Moncel b *, Salvatore Milli c,d *, Luca Bellucci a,e , Massimo Ruffo a , Barbara Saracino a , Giorgio Manzi a,e,f * a Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana, Via Ulisse Aldrovandi 18, 00197 Roma, Italy b Department of Human and Environment, UMR 7194 CNRS, National Museum of Natural History, Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, Rue René Panhard, 75013 Paris, France c Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Sapienza Università di Roma, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy d CNR-IGAG, Istituto di Geologia Ambientale e Geoingegneria, Area della Ricerca di Roma 1, 00015 Montelibretti (Roma), Italy e Polo museale Sapienza, Sapienza Università di Roma, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy f Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale, Sapienza Università di Roma, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy *Corresponding authors E-mail address: marie-helene.moncel@mnhn.fr (M.-H. Moncel), salvatore.milli@uniroma1.it (S. Milli), giorgio.manzi@uniroma1.it (G. Manzi). (RECEIVED May 29, 2018; ACCEPTED July 23, 2019) Abstract The Ceprano human calvarium, dated around 400,000 yr, is a well-known fossil specimen. It represents significant evidence of hominin presence in the Italian peninsula during the Middle Pleistocene and may be considered representative of an archaic variant of the widespread and polymorphic species Homo heidelbergensis. Since its discovery (March 1994), systematic sur- veys in the Campogrande area near Ceprano, central Italy, identified 12 localities (CG1-12) with archaeological and/or pale- ontological assemblages. On this basis, fieldwork was carried out at Campogrande between 2001 and 2006, including drilled cores and excavations, allowing a detailed description of the stratigraphic and paleoenvironmental context associated with the human fossil specimen and the archaeological materials. In the present paper we focus on the stratigraphy and sedimentolog- ical features of the uppermost deposits, coupled with a detailed appraisal of the available lithic assemblages that mostly belongs to overlying sediments (CG9 and CG10 localities). We conclude that the Ceprano hominin died in a floodplain envi- ronment with a low topographic gradient, where a fluvial meandering channel occurred. The archaeological materials describe a network of sites that document common behavioural features of human groups of the mid-to-late Middle Pleisto- cene, representing evidence of the regionalization observed across Europe after Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage 12. Keywords: Acheulean; Paleoenvironment; Middle Pleistocene; Homo heidelbergensis; Ceprano; Italy INTRODUCTION The mode and timing of the earliest hominin dispersals in Europe have been one of the most debated topics during the last decades in paleoanthropology (for a review, see Manzi [2016]). Nonetheless, a consensus has been reached about the presence of human populations scattered in southern regions of the continent since the Early Pleistocene, including even rare occupations of more northern latitudes (Carbonell et al., 2008; Arzarello et al., 2009; Despriée et al., 2018). It is probable that these earliest colonization stages were spora- dic (e.g., Agustí et al., 2009), influenced by environmental and climatic conditions that were particularly important dur- ing the 1.4–0.4 Ma interval. The time span bracketed between the late Early and the early Middle Pleistocene was characterized by a considerable change in the Earth’s climate and has been defined as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition or Revolution (Maasch, 1988; Saltzman and Maasch, 1988; Maslin and Ridgwell, 2005;O’Regan et al., 2005), now also referred to as the Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (EMPT; Ruddiman et al., 1986; Poirier and Billups, 2014; Head and Gibbard, 2015). Particularly, a significant ecological reorganization occurred during Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 16, around 700 ka (e.g., Manzi et al., 2011). The recurring Homo dispersals may be regarded, therefore, as a component of the faunal renewal that arose during the late Early Pleistocene and at the onset of the Middle Pleistocene, when large mammals of ultimate African and Asian origin spread in Western Europe (e.g., Moncel et al., 2013, 2015; Palombo, 2014). Cite this article: Biddittu, I., Moncel, M.-H., Milli, S., Bellucci, L., Ruffo, M., Saracino, B., Manzi, G. 2020. Stratigraphy, sedimentology, and archaeology of Middle Pleistocene localities near Ceprano, Campogrande area, Italy. Quaternary Research 93, 155–171. https://doi.org/10.1017/ qua.2019.52 Quaternary Research Copyright © University of Washington. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2019. doi:10.1017/qua.2019.52 155 https://doi.org/10.1017/qua.2019.52 Published online by Cambridge University Press