A new Palaeolithic female figurine from Piatra Neamț, Romania

We report here on the 2019 discovery of an Upper Palaeolithic female figurine at the open-air site of Piatra Neamț in the Bistrița valley, Romania. This figurine, the first ever to be discovered in Romania, was found in an area in which Palaeolithic figurative art is extremely poorly represented and such figurines are absent. We shall present the first observations regarding the context of find and materials on the site, the results of the dating of occupations excavated so far and a detailed description of the figurine, for which low- and high-resolution microscopy was used. Its analysis involved several stages of research and the use of non-destructive methods: Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE), FT–Raman vibrational spectroscopy, Computed tomography (CT) scan. In this way, ever since its first publication, the Palaeolithic figurine found at Piatra Neamț has been the subject of several interdisciplinary studies, which have allowed for better description and characterisation of the traces preserved on it.