Is It Human? Discriminating between Real Tracks and Track-Like Structures

ABSTRACT

Some human footprints-like hollows in the tuffaceous ground of an ancient quarry and of a recent anthropic path, created by the inhabitants no more than 30 years ago near the small village of Carangi (Caserta province, Southern Italy), allowed scientists to study some of the most misleading alteration processes of the volcanic tuff formations. The closeness of this site to the “Ciampate del Diavolo” ichnosite, bearing some of the oldest human fossil footprints, and the common stratigraphical and sedimentological background permitted accurate comparisons between actual human fossil footprints and footprint-like depressions, which can be easily mistaken for actual fossil evidence. This comparative study has permitted the reporting of some useful features and advice on distinguishing actual fossil footprints from natural and/or anthropic pseudo-tracks.

KEYWORDS:

• Human ichnology
• Footprint formation
• Track preservation
• Brown Leucitic Tuff
• Roccamonfina volcano

Acknowledgments

We thank the inhabitants of the Carangi village for their great help in giving us all the necessary information about the examined pathway and about the recent evolution of the “Cantarelle” quarry area. We also thank the mayor and the administrators of the City of Marzano Appio, the president and the administrators of the “Parco Regionale “Roccamonfina-Foce del Garigliano,” the “Soprintendenza Archeologica per le Province di Salerno, Benevento, Avellino e Caserta,” and Mr. Aldo Integlia, owner of the “Cantarelle” area, for their permission to survey and study the examined sites. We would like to acknowledge Mr. Domenico Campanile, Mr. Mario Rivalli, and his daughter Ms. Elisa for their precious help during the survey of the Carangi area.

We are also very thankful to Lida Xing, the anonymous reviewer, and Murray Gingras for their precious comments and suggestions that increased the quality of the manuscript.

Finally, we would like to thank the illustrator of the topographical map in Fig. 1, the architect Gennaro Farinaro, and Ms. Terry Gray for her linguistic check.