The dispersal of modern humans into an Eastern European refugial area of late Neanderthals: interdisciplinary studies of contemporaneous industries from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in the Crimea (Ukraine)
Final Report Abstract
The project was dedicated to the investigation of the last Neanderthals in Europe. In greater detail, it aimed at testing the hypothesis that Crimea was one of the last refugial areas of this humans, and to shed light on the question whether their behaviors differed from those of the first modern humans that entered their territories. Excavations at one of the key sites of the Crimean Middle Paleolithic, Zaskalanya V, not only resulted in an unusual high number of archaeological finds, including the tooth of a juvenile Neanderthal, but also in the re-consideration of common believes on the behavior of Crimean Neanderthals. For a long time, it was thought that they reduced their lithic artifacts mainly because they stayed far away from raw material sources. The new investigations showed that this paradigm is probably wrong and they also did so when staying near to raw material outcrops, probably because they carried around selected items of their gear over long periods. An analysis of the transformation of raw material at Buran-Kaya III allowed to reconstruct the movements of both Neanderthal and early modern human hunter-gatherers. It turned out that modern humans had markedly different subsistence strategies. They were more mobile, used other parts of the Crimean landscapes for resource acquisition, had search strategies on an encounter basis, and probably spend only part of the year in the Crimea. In any case, the first modern humans that arrived in the Crimea with the Streletskayian industry were very different from the regional Neanderthal groups. If compared to the second group of incoming early humans, which came with Aurignacian tool kits, differences were less pronounced. Faunal analysis conducted in the frames of this project proved that Neanderthals had the same hunting abilities and were able to kill entire family groups of equids during the warm season. This has been suggested before, but the high-resolution of the meso- and microwear of teeth allowed to more securely estimate the season of death for a large number of individuals. The fact that they all were killed in one season is important, as it can be interpreted as indicating the provisioning of large bulk of meat that could only be handled by long term planning and, perhaps, storage. Another major issue of the project was the test of the late chronology and, intertwined with it, the “refugial area theory”, which assumes that the last Neanderthals survived in the Crimea and only disappeared approximately 10.000 years later after the first arrival of modern humans in Europe. This theory has been refuted recently by rejecting radiocarbon dates without a rigorous treatment method. New dates obtained by this project with exactly this method corroborate previous dates and underline that the late chronology might still be valid.
Publications
- (2015): The RESET project: Constructing a European tephra lattice for refined synchronization of environmental and archaeological events during the last c. 100 ka. Quaternary Science Reviews 118, 1-17
Lowe, J. J. et al.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.04.006) - (2016): Zaskalnaya V: lithological and archaeological sequences. In: Hugo Obermaier-Gesellschaft für Erforschung des Eiszeitalters und der Steinzeit e.V. (Hrsg.): 57th Annual Meeting in Budapest March 29th – April 2nd, 2016. Erlangen, 19-20
Chabai, V. & Th. Uthmeier
- (2017): Between East and West: A comparison of Micoquian assemblages from Eastern and Central Europe. In: Hugo Obermaier-Gesellschaft für Erforschung des Eiszeitalters und der Steinzeit e.V. (Hrsg.): 59th Annual Meeting in Aurich April 18th – April 22nd 2017, Erlangen, 19-21
Chabai, V. & Th. Uthmeier
- (2018): Erfolgreiche 15 Jahre interdisziplinäre Erforschung der letzten Neandertaler der Krim in Kooperation mit dem Archäologischen Institut/Akademie der Wissenschaften der Ukraine. In: J. Richter (Hrsg.): 111 Jahre Prähistorische Archäologie in Köln. Rahden/Westf., 86-97
Uthmeier, Th.
- (2018): Formation processes at sites with high resolution sequences in the Crimean Middle Paleolithic: the Kabazi V rockshelter and the openair site of Kabazi II compared. Quaternary International 485, 44-67
Uthmeier, Th. & V. P. Chabai
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.01.017) - (2018): New excavations at the Middle Paleolithic site Zaskalnaya V, Crimea: the 2012-2013 field seasons. A preliminary Report. Jahrbuch Quartär 65, 27-71
Chabai, V. P. & Th. Uthmeier
- (2018): Paleoenvironmental context of the human occupations in Crimea during the MIS 3: an approach using tooth microwear patterns in ungulates. In: Hugo Obermaier-Gesellschaft für Erforschung des Eiszeitalters und der Steinzeit e.V. (Hrsg.): Neandertaler behaviour and ecology in the Mediterranaen area. 60th Annual Meeting in Tarragona April 3 – April 7, 2018. Erlangen, 44-45
Ramírez-Pedraza, I., Rivals, F., Chabai, V. & Th. Uthmeier
- (2019): Untersuchungen zu einem der letzten Rückzugsgebiete der Neandertaler auf der Halbinsel Krim (Ukraine). In: Mischka, D., Grüner, A., Rheinhardt, C., Uthmeier, Th. & U. Verstegen (Hrsg.): Ausgegraben und Ausgestellt. Erlangen, 25-26
Uthmeier, Th.
