Journal
QUATERNARY RESEARCH
Volume 99, Issue -, Pages 223-247Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/qua.2020.61
Keywords
Middle Palaeolithic; Armenian highland; Palaeolithic; Landscape dynamics; Open-air sites; Republic of Armenia; Hrazdan-Kotayk Plateau
Funding
- Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
- Leverhulme Trust [RPG-2016-102]
- University of Winchester
- University of Connecticut's Norian Armenian Programs Committee
- Gfoeller Renaissance Foundation, USA
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The findings from excavations at the Middle Palaeolithic site of Alapars-1 in central Armenia reveal changes in human occupation patterns from ephemeral to more persistent during the last interglacial and glacial periods. Sedimentological and chronological analyses show three phases of sedimentation and soil development, along with differential artifact discard patterns and source exploitation. This suggests variability in technological organization during the Middle Palaeolithic.
Here we report the findings from excavations at the open-air Middle Palaeolithic site of Alapars-1 in central Armenia. Three stratified Palaeolithic artefact assemblages were found within a 6-m-thick alluvial-aeolian sequence, located on the flanks of an obsidian-bearing lava dome. Combined sedimentological and chronological analyses reveal three phases of sedimentation and soil development. During Marine Oxygen Isotope Stages 5-3, the manner of deposition changes from alluvial to aeolian, with a development of soil horizons. Techno-typological analysis and geochemical sourcing of the obsidian artefacts reveal differential discard patterns, source exploitation, and artefact densities within strata, suggesting variability in technological organization during the Middle Palaeolithic. Taken together, these results indicate changes in hominin occupation patterns from ephemeral to more persistent in relation to landscape dynamics during the last interglacial and glacial periods in central Armenia.
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