Grotta-santuario di Santa Maria di Agnano ad Ostuni, Brindisi: rappresentazioni grafiche e significati simbolici

The Cave of Santa Maria di Agnano is characterized by continuous human occupation: it's rated as a relevant site for daily life activities and for the performance of cult practices developed within structured rituals. Serving as a funerary space but also as a focal point associated with hunting dynamics for Paleolithic human groups, it gained a notable ritual significance for the last communities of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. The analytic study focused on the corpus of artistic manifestations on limestone pebbles, discovered between 2016 and 2017 during the archaeological excavation in the outer area to the west of the cave: this has contributed to outlining the cave's cultual occupation in the advanced stages of the 8th millennium BC, corresponding to a late aspect of the Mesolithic facies influenced by the final Epigravettian culture.