Weapons of the lower layer of the Suren II site in the Crimea

A new study of the collections from the Suren II site, housed in the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (the Kunstkamera), has shown that the lithic industry of the lower layer of this site consists of two components. The first component has direct analogies at the sites in the focal territory of Sviderian culture. The most typical artifacts are numerous willow-leaf shaped arrowheads with flat ventral retouch. The second component is associated with the sites of the Final Paleolithic of Eastern Europe, where slotted bone projectile heads with microblade inserts were found. Inserts of projectiles and burins for cutting grooves in bone are also present in the inventory of the lower layer of the Suren II site. This makes it possible to define the lower layer of the Suren II site not as a site of the Sviderian culture, but as a local phenomenon that was most likely formed at the very end of the Pleistocene as a result of the interaction of the Sviderian groups with the Epigravetic population of the Northern Black Sea region. The data obtained du­ring the study allows us to hypothesize that a group of the Sviderian culture population, which migrated from their original territory down the Dnieper Ri­ver, came into contact with the Epigravettian population of the Middle and Lower Dnieper regions. As a result of this contact, the newcomers adopted some important innovations in weapon production. The first innovation was the production of bone tips with grooves and microblades-inserts. The second innovation was the production of backed points and bladelets. When this population came to Crimea, they already had both traditions of making wea­pons: the Sviderian tradition of making willow leaf-shaped arrowheads and the North Pontic tradition of making bone arrowheads with microblades, as well backed points and bladelets

Pleistocene · Population · Projectile · Surface layer · Environmental and Biological Research in Conflict Zones · Marine and environmental studies · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology