Mario Federico Rolfo
Associate Professor of Prehistory and Protohistory (L-ANT/01)Mario Federico Rolfo is Associate Professor of Prehistory and Protohistory (L-ANT/01) at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
Principal areas of expertise:
Geo-archaeological study of the Albano volcanic district, analysis of territorial organization and economic strategies in the Late Pleistocene in the Colli Albani.
Human presence in the Late Pleistocene in the coastal area of Latium: mobility, occupation, and exploitation of the territory by Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Consultancy for the archaeological excavation of the Middle Paleolithic levels at Grotta Guattari (S.F. Circeo, Lt).
Neanderthals: Archaeology of sites and territorial dynamics.
Men, cults, and gods: Study of human activities in caves from Prehistory to Protohistory.
Geoarchaeology: Study of the natural and anthropic formation of deposits in Pre-Protohistoric archaeological sites.
- Participation in nationally relevant projects:
2015-2017: Participation in the “Margine Tirrenico” Project, promoted by INGV and the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. The project involves the revision and new chronostratigraphic framework of Pleistocene paleontological and archaeological sites along the Tyrrhenian margin of Latium, considering glacio-eustatic cyclicity, volcanism, and tectonics as critical factors.
- 2016-17: Promoter of the scientific agreement with the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for the project “Early and Middle Bronze Age in the Pontine Plain”. The project involves the excavation and study of several natural caves in Southern Latium: Grotta La Sassa (Sonnino – Lt).
L-ANT/01
Paleoenvironmental reconstructions in Pre-Protohistory – geoarchaeological studies on the Pleistocene – Research in natural caves.
Rolfo M.F., Achino K.F., Gatta M., Silvestri L., Grotta Mora Cavorso, from Protohistory to Present Times. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2021. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6217-4 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6217-2.
2021-2022
Piero Ceruleo, Tassos Kotsakis, Carmelo Petronio, Mario F. Rolfo, Leonardo Salari, Gianluca Sottili, New volcanological and palethnological data from Avetrana site (Southern Italy), Quaternary International, 2023, ISSN 1040-6182, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2022.12.014. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618222003949).
D’Agostino, A., Di Marco, G., Marvelli, S. et al. Neolithic dental calculi provide evidence for environmental proxies and consumption of wild edible fruits and herbs in central Apennines. Commun Biol 5, 1384 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-04354-0.
D’Agostino, A., Di Marco, G., Marvelli, S., Marchesini, M., Martínez-Labarga, J. M., Rolfo, M. F., Canini, A., & Gismondi, A. (2022). Pollen record of the Late Pleistocene–Holocene stratigraphic sequence and current plant biodiversity from Grotta Mora Cavorso (Simbruini Mountains, Central Italy). Ecology and Evolution, 12, e9486. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9486.
Mario Federico Rolfo, Piero Ceruleo, Fabrizio Marra, Brian Jicha, Maurizio Gatta. Exploring the Lithic Variability of the Mousterian (MIS 9–3) Open‑Air Sites of the Pontine Plain (Central Italy). Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology (2022) 5:13 https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-022-00123-x.
Maurizio Gatta, Angelica Fiorillo, Leonardo Salari, Katia Francesca Achino, Mario Federico Rolfo, Luca Alessandri. The faunal assemblage from La Sassa cave (Latium, Italy): Environmental perspective of a Late Pleistocene cave hyena – Brown bear den. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 46 (2022) 103691 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103691.
Francesca Cortese,· Flavio De Angelis, · Katia Francesca Achino. · Luana Bontempo. · Maria Rosa di Cicco, Maurizio Gatta, · Carmine Lubritto, · Leonardo Salari, · Letizia Silvestri, · Olga Rickards, · Mario Federico Rolfo. Isotopic reconstruction of the subsistence strategy for a Central Italian Bronze Age community (Pastena cave, 2nd millennium BCE). Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2022) 14:201 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-022-01673-5.
Maurizio Gatta, Mario F. Rolfo, Leonardo Salar, Eileen Jacob, Federica Valentini, Germano Scevola, Marco Doddi, Anna Neri, Daniel Martín-Vega. Dermestid pupal chambers on Late Pleistocene faunal bones from Cava Muracci (Cisterna di Latina, central Italy): Environmental implications for the central Mediterranean basin during MIS 3. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 35 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102780.
Rolfo M. F., Achino K. F., Cortese F., Gatta M., Salari L., Silvestri L. Cave Rituals under the magnifying glass: Methodological resources to detect unicity at the Italian Middle Bronze Age site of Grotta di Pastena. IpoTESI di Preistoria, Vol. 14, 2021, 1-14. ISSN 1974-7985 https://doi.org/10.6092/ISSN.1974-7985/14323.
Petronio C., Rolfo M.F., Ceruleo P., Di Mario F., Ferracci A., Fiore I., Gatta M., Salari L. Preliminary report on the new faunal remains from Grotta Guattari (Late Pleistocene, San Felice Circeo, Latium). BORNH, Vol.1, no.4, 2021, 29-38. DOI https://doi.org/10.6093/2724-4393/8927.
Luca Alessandri, Clarissa Belardelli, Peter Attema, Francesca Cortese, Mario Federico Rolfo, Jan Sevink, Wouter van Gorp. Bronze and Iron Age salt production on the Italian Tyrrhenian coast. An overview. In M. Gnade, M. Revello Lami (Eds), Tracing Technology, Forty Years of Archaeological Research at Satricum. PEETERS Leuven – Paris – Bristol, CT, 2021, 25-40. ISBN 978-90-429-4664-4.
L. Alessandri, G.L. Cardello, P.A.J. Attema, V. Baiocchi, F. De Angelis, S. Del Pizzo, F. Di Ciaccio, A. Fiorillo, M. Gatta, F. Monti, M. Onori, M.F. Rolfo, M. Romboni, G. Sottili, S. Troisi. Reconstructing the Late Pleistocene e Anthropocene interaction between the neotectonic and archaeological landscape evolution in the Apennines (La Sassa cave, Italy). Quaternary Science Reviews 265 (2021) 107067 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107067.
Tina Saupe, Francesco Montinaro, Cinzia Scaggion, Nicola Carrara, Toomas Kivisild, Eugenia D’Atanasio, Ruoyun Hui, Anu Solnik, Oph elie Lebrasseur, Greger Larson, Luca Alessandri, Ilenia Arienzo, Flavio De Angelis, Mario Federico Rolfo, Robin Skeates, Letizia Silvestri, Jessica Beckett, Sahra Talamo, Andrea Dolfini, Monica Miari, Mait Metspalu, Stefano Benazzi, Cristian Capelli, Luca Pagani, and Christiana L. Scheib. Saupe et al., Ancient genomes reveal structural shifts after the arrival of Steppe-related ancestry in the Italian Peninsula, Current Biology (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.022.
Robin Skeates, Jessica Beckett, Daniela Mancini, Claudio Cavazzuti, Letizia Silvestri, W. Derek Hamilton, Kerry L. Sayle, Kayla D. Crowder, Mario Rolfo & Micaela Angle. Rethinking Collective Burial in Mediterranean Caves: Middle Bronze Age Grotta Regina Margherita, Central Italy. Journal of Field Archaeology, 2021 DOI: 10.1080/00934690.2021.1917137
Flavio De Angelis, Maura Pellegrini, Cristina Martínez‑Labarga, Laura Anzivino, Gabriele Scorrano, Mauro Brilli, Francesca Giustini, Micaela Angle, Mauro Calattini, Giovanni Carboni, Paola Catalano, Emanuela Ceccaroni, Serena Cosentino, Stefania Di Giannantonio, Ilaria Isola, Fabio Martini, Elsa Pacciani, Francesca Radina, Mario Federico Rolfo, Mara Silvestrini, Nicoletta Volante, Giovanni Zanchetta, Lucia Sarti7 & Olga Rickards. Exploring mobility in Italian Neolithic and Copper Age communities. Scientific Reports, 11:2697, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81656-z.
Consultant for the SABAP Soprintendenza archeologia SABAP per le province di Latina e Frosinone for the coordination of the archaeological investigations at the Grotta Guattari site in S.F. Circeo (Lt) (2019 to present).
