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The Dating of a Middle Paleolithic Blade Industry in Southern Russia and Its Relationship to the Initial Upper Paleolithic

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Abstract

The open-air site of Shlyakh, located near Volgograd in southern Russia, contains two assemblages of stone artifacts assigned to the Middle Paleolithic. Most of the artifacts are buried in low-energy stream deposits and appear to be in primary context (i.e., they do not exhibit signs of stream transport). The lithic technology reflects an emphasis on blade production and Levallois products are present. The artifacts lie in sediments formed during and immediately following the Laschamp Paleomagnetic excursion (41.2 ± 1.6 ka); they underlie the Mono Lake excursion (34.2 ± 1.2 ka). Although the radiocarbon dating is broadly consistent with the paleomagnetic stratigraphy, the wide range of ages obtained on bone from the upper assemblage suggests that older materials may have been introduced to one or both cultural layers. The dating and contents of Shlyakh are discussed in the wider context of events in Europe during ~ 50–40 ka. At this time, an Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) industry (Bohunician), characterized by Levallois blade technology and a high proportion of Upper Paleolithic tool types, is established in central Europe and on the southwest plain of eastern Europe. A different pattern is evident on the south-central plain, however, where the IUP is absent and a local “transitional unit” in the form of a Middle Paleolithic blade industry is represented at Shlyakh and other sites during 50–40 ka.

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Notes

  1. One of the bone fragments from layer 8 dated by the Oxford AMS Laboratory was identified as Equus sp. (Bronk Ramsey et al. 2002, p. 38).

  2. Overall, the pollen–spore record at Shlyakh appears to reflect interstadial climates, with some warm and cool oscillations; the uppermost pollen zone indicates significantly cooler and drier conditions (Nehoroshev et al. 2003a, pp. 14–15).

  3. Two isolated teeth recovered from beneath the CI tephra at Kostenki are assigned to modern humans (Gerasimova et al. 2007, pp. 95–108).

  4. While the IUP sites contain high percentages of Upper Paleolithic tools (e.g., typical end-scrapers [e.g., Svoboda 2003b, pp. 153–157]), typical Upper Paleolithic tools are virtually absent at Shlyakh (the tools classified as burins and end-scrapers are atypical). The contrast in tool inventories also is found in the IUP assemblages of northern Asia (e.g., Kuhn and Zwyns 2014; Zwyns et al. 2012, p. 43; Zwyns and Lbova 2019). The exception to the pattern at Shlyakh is a high-backed end-scraper, similar to tools recovered from—and considered especially diagnostic of—the early Upper Paleolithic in western and central Europe. The artifact was discovered in fill deposits apparently derived from layer 9, although its provenience is problematic.

  5. Although initially applied specifically to the Emiran/IUP (Bar-Yosef 2000), the term “transitional industry” (or “transitional units”) subsequently was applied to a broad range of local industries in northern Eurasia, such as the Szeletian and Uluzzian, that (a) contain elements of both the Middle and Upper Paleolithic technology and/or tool types and (b) date to the end of the Middle, and the beginning of the Upper, Paleolithic (e.g., Kozlowski 2007; Villa et al. 2018).

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Catherine M. Cameron, Sarah J. Kurnick, Stephen Lekson, Payson Sheets, Timothy Webmoor, and multiple anonymous reviewers for two journals, all of whom reviewed earlier drafts of the manuscript. The senior author thanks Ruslan Koropets’kii and Vadim Stepanchuk for the opportunity to examine the Bohunician assemblages from Kulychivka in western Ukraine.

Funding

The field and laboratory research was supported by a Leakey Foundation 2013 general grant and multiple grants from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. The Leakey Foundation grant was administered by the Illinois State Museum.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, 80309-0450, USA

    John F. Hoffecker, Scott J. Lehman & Patrick J. Cappa

  2. Departments of Anthropology and Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Vance T. Holliday

  3. Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, Dvortsovaya nab., 18, St. Petersburg, 191186, Russia

    Pavel Nehoroshev, Leonid Vishnyatsky & Alexander Otcherednoy

  4. Schmidt Institute of Earth Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Bol’shaya Gruzinskaya str., 10-1, Moscow, 123242, Russia

    Natalya Salnaya

  5. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    Paul Goldberg

  6. Institute for Archaeological Sciences, University of Tübingen, Rümelinstr. 23, 72070, Tübingen, Germany

    Paul Goldberg

  7. Earth System Science Department, University of California, Irvine, B321 Croul Hall, Irvine, CA, 92697-3100, USA

    John Southon

  8. Istituto di Geologia Ambientale e Geoingegneria, CNR, 00133, Rome, RM, Italy

    Biagio Giaccio

  9. Geoluminescence Dating Research Laboratory, Department of Geology, Baylor University, Waco, TX, 76798, USA

    Steven L. Forman

  10. Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Jay Quade

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  1. John F. Hoffecker
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Correspondence to John F. Hoffecker.

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Hoffecker, J.F., Holliday, V.T., Nehoroshev, P. et al. The Dating of a Middle Paleolithic Blade Industry in Southern Russia and Its Relationship to the Initial Upper Paleolithic. J Paleo Arch 2, 381–417 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-019-00032-6

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