The Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition in Europe at Kostenki
John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin has posted some comments on a paper published in Science on January 12, 2007 on which I was a co-author. These comments warrant responses, and I am grateful to Kris Hirst for providing me with an opportunity to post them on her website. Update: Hawks comments have been removed as of 7/7/09.The paper was entitled " Early Upper Paleolithic in Eastern Europe and Implications for the Dispersal of Modern Humans" and it was authored by M. V. Anikovich, A. A. Sinitsyn, and others. It reports on artifacts assigned to early Upper Paleolithic industries that are buried below a volcanic tephra horizon at several open-air sites at Kostenki on the Don River in Russia.
Chronological Questions
Hawks begins with a discussion of the dating of the archaeological layers at Kostenki, noting that many radiocarbon dates have been obtained on various layers at these sites. He observes that calibration of even the oldest radiocarbon dates from Kostenki does not suggest an age for the earliest layers as great as that proposed in the paper (45,000-42,000 years ago). This is correct, and it is noted in the text of the paper that calibration of dates obtained on wood charcoal (dates on bone were excluded) yield age estimates that are roughly 1,000-2,000 years younger than estimates based on other methods. Two recently published calibration curves were used, including CalPal ( Cologne Radiocarbon Calibration Programme ).The chronology for the early Upper Paleolithic layers at Kostenki is based primarily on other methods, which indicate that the layers buried below the volcanic tephra horizon antedate 40,000 calendar years. The anchor for the Kostenki chronology is the tephra itself, which is now identified as the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) Y5, derived from southern Italy. Although Hawks states that this is not new, the statement is misleading. The tephra at Kostenki was tied to a source in Italy (Campi Flegrei) in the 1980s, but not to a specific eruption--only a range of possible eruptions prior to 30,000 years BP. It was identified as the CI Y5 tephra by David Pyle (Cambridge University) on the basis of samples collected at Kostenki 14 and other localities in August 2002. Pyle's results have only just been published in Quaternary Science Reviews. In the fall of 2005, Biagio Giaccio ( CNR, Rome ) independently confirmed this identification using a sample that I collected in 2004 from Borshchevo 5 (one of a related group of sites located several km southeast of Kostenki). The CI Y5 tephra exhibits a highly characteristic geochemical signature, and is readily distinguished from other ashes.
The Middle/Upper Paleolithic Transition in Europe
The CI Y5 represents a massive eruption that is now dated by Ar/Ar in the eastern Mediterranean to ~40,000-39,000 calendar years ago. Its stratigraphic and chronologic position is well established in Italy, where it is correlated with the Greenland ice core record, paleomagnetic stratigraphy, and other sequences for this time period (uncorrected radiocarbon dates in these sites are similar to the dates from Kostenki). In my view, the chronology put together by our Italian colleagues is the most reliable and informative in Europe for the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition. The Italian sequence indicates that "proto-Aurignacian" assemblages (Paul Mellars has suggested that we should call these "Fumanian" because they differ from the classic Aurigancian in many respects) immediately underlie the CI Y5 tephra and date to about 42,000-40,000 years. Their appearance is correlated with warm phases GIS 10 & 9 in the Greenland ice core record (GISP2). Below these lie transitional assemblages assigned to the regional Uluzzian industry and--like the Chatelperronian and Szeletian--probably were produced by local Neandertals. Typical or classic Aurignacian assemblages overlie the tephra.Because the CI Y5 tephra was deposited across a large portion of south-central and eastern Europe, it offers a useful chrono-stratigraphic marker for the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition in places outside Italy as well. The CI Y5 ash is identified at Temnata Cave in Bulgaria, where it overlies early Aurignacian assemblages that some believe reveal a sequence of development from an older local industry.
At Kostenki, the CI Y5 tephra overlies several early Upper Paleolithic layers that contain a variety of assemblages. The tephrochronology is supported by paleomagnetism and a series of OSL dates. In fact, even the calibrated radiocarbon dates suggest that the layers below the tephra are more than 40,000 years, but the OSL dates suggest that the lowest occupation levels at Kostenki 12 and 14 are at least a few thousand years older. On the basis of recent palynological analyses at Kostenki 12, G. M. Levkovskaya (Institute of the History of Material Culture, RAS) suggests that the lowest levels may be correlated with the GIS 12 warm interval in the Greenland ice core record, which is dated at ~45,000 years.
