factors,adding to difficulties in classifying them in relation to their
importance.One of these signals may be the “flute”from Divje babe I.The Archeological Setting
The Divje babe I site is located at 230m above the valley of the river
Idrijca,which has an altitude of 220m above sea level at the cave.The
Idrijca cuts through the picturesque Idrijsko and Cerkljansko hills
(heights to 1,622m) with their associated high plateaus,and opens into
one of the most beautiful rivers in Europe,the Soca,which flows into the
Adriatic Sea.Geographically,this is the medium range of mountains of
western Slovenia,where today Alpine and sub-Mediterranean influences
are mixed because of the proximity of the Alps (Julian Alps,heights to
2,864m) and the Adriatic Sea.In the last Glacial,sub-Mediterranean
influences were less pronounced since most of the northern part of
the Adriatic Sea was land (Bortolami et al.1997).
The cave of Divje babe I is among the key Paleolithic sites in the
southeastern Alpine region (Turk 1997).Other well-known sites in the
vicinity include Krapina (Gorjanovic ́-Kramberger 1913;Malez 1970),
Vindija (Malez 1978;Karavanic ́ 1995),and Sˇandalja (Malez 1974;Miracle
1995) in Croatia.The first two are famous for skeletal and other remains
of Neanderthals (Wolpoff et al.1981;Smith 1982;Radovcˇic ́ et al.1988).
In terms of culture and past environment,Divje babe I is linked to fairly
distant northern Italian sites from around Verona,which belong to an
exceptionally rich Paleolithic province (Leonardi and Broglio 1962;
Broglio 1984;Palma di Cesnola 1996).
The site of Divje babe I was excavated in 1978 and 1980–1986 by Mitja
Brodar from the Institute of Archaeology,Ljubljana,and after him,from
1989–1995 and in 1996,by Ivan Turk and Janez Dirjec from the same
Institute (Turk 1997).The excavations established an exceptionally thick
cave infilling consisting of twenty-six main layers.The total thickness of
all layers is a good 12m.Bedrock has not been reached.The main con-
stituents,for the most part unconsolidated sediment,are autochthonous
gravel and silt.The main allochthonous constituent,in addition to car-
bonate and phosphate precipitates,is a mass of fossil remains of cave
bear.Because of admixtures of organic origin contributed by cave bear,
powerful diagenetic processes have occurred in most layers.Many years
of research provided some good chronostratigraphic anchorage points
for the existing stratigraphic sequence,as follows,from top down:1.Flowstone (calcite flows and stalagmites) on the present surface of the
cave.They were deposited in the Holocene,in the last 10,000 years,dis-
cordantly with underlying sediments from the Upper Pleistocene.237 New Perspectives on the Beginnings of Music