Stone Industries of Early Stages of the Middle Paleolithic at the Darvagchay-Zaliv-4 Site (Research of 2021)

Abstract

The territory of Primorsky Dagestan is one of the places on the Eurasian continent, where a constant and massive presence of Neanderthal populations in antiquity was noted. In particular, this is evidenced by a large number of Middle Paleolithic sites in a relatively small territory of the Darvagchay geoarchaeological region (Southeastern Dagestan), discovered and studied in the last decade. This article is devoted to the results of the latest studies of the Middle Paleolithic complexes of the Darvagchay-Zaliv-4 site, the materials of which belong to the early stages of the Middle Paleolithic and significantly supplement the evidence material of this cultural-chronological period in the territory of the North-Eastern Caucasus. In the field season of 2021, two sets of artifacts related to different stages of the Middle Paleolithic were discovered at the site. The age of the geological horizons, where they were discovered, was previously based on the results of absolute dating by OSL. The stone industry of the first complex is characterized by the Levallois technique and a typical Middle Paleolithic toolkit; artifacts were located in horizon 1c. Chronologically, the time of its existence is determined by the period of the Riess-Wurm (Eem, Mikulino) interglacial, in the range of 120-110 ka BP (MIS 5e). Artifacts of another complex, discovered at the site for the first time, were found in the middle part of Layer 2 (light loam, loess). Aeolian-deluvial processes played a leading role in sedimentation here. The technical and typological characteristics of a small collection of stone products make it possible to attribute it to the earliest stages of the Middle Paleolithic. The age of the culture-bearing horizon was based on a series of the OSL dates in the range of 200-180 ka BP (MIS 8).