The 2018 excavations concentrated on quadrants C 30, 31 and 32, D-E 30, 31, 32 and 33, F30, 31, 32 e 33. During the opening of a sondages in the interior chamber of the cave traces of a ritual occupation dating to the Final Bronze Age came to light. In addition to the presence of cremations, numerous glass paste and amber beads, fragments of calcinated bones and human remains, mainly teeth from individuals of various ages (infants to adults) were recovered.

A first spit constituted by loose brown sediment with a sandy matrix was removed in all quadrants. An area rich in gravel with a sandy grey matrix (spit 2 grey) emerged below spit 1 in quadrants E30, E31 II – III, F31 III, F30, D30 I-II, D31 II. Over the rest of the surfaces the soil was loose and brown (spit 2 brown). Larger stones were present at the edges of the grey areas. Spit 2 brown (below 2 grey) contained the anthropic material described above and impasto pottery. Spit 2 brown overlay a level of gravel in a grey brown matrix (spit 3), apparently sterile, which seemed to rest directly on a stalagmitic crust (alfa?). In quadrant E30, sector I, a small pit emerged containing charcoal sediment rich in fragments of apparently calcinated/burnt bone sealed by pottery fragments from a single vase.

The typological characteristics of some of the beads (Frattesina type), date the entire complex to the Final Bronze Age.

Since 2017, the Grotta della Cala, like the Grotta di Castelcivita (another Palaeolithic site investigated by the Siena University’s Prehistory and Anthropology Research Unit) figures as one of the key sites in the European project ERC Consolidator SUCCESS “The earliest migration of Homo sapiens in Southern Europe: understanding the biocultural processes that define our uniqueness”. This fifteen-year project is headed by Bologna University and involves the universities of Siena, Genoa, Ferrara and Rome “La Sapienza”. It aims to reconstruct the settlement dynamics of the Italian peninsula during the so-called transition phase between the middle and upper Palaeolithic and foresees multidisciplinary investigations on a vast scale at various prehistoric sites in Italy.