Yudinovo is an Upper Paleolithic base camp site located on a promontory above the right bank of the Sudost' River in the Pogar District, Briansk region of Russia. Radiocarbon dates and geomorphology provide an occupation date between 16000 and 12000 years ago. The site is interpreted as a base camp, used by hunter-gatherers during winter seasons (October-April) for a significant number of years. Yudinovo is very strong support for the sometime controversial notion that Upper Paleolithic hunters hunted the ancient elephant known as woolly mammoth.
The site consists of four concentrations of woolly mammoth bone. Workshop areas associated with the mammoth bones include ten flint working areas, two mammoth ivory processing areas and seven areas where skinning and butchery of polar fox occurred.
Yudinovo Artifacts
Artifacts recovered to date include more than 80,000 lithic and 40,000 bone and ivory artifacts. More than 1500 stone tools were found, including burins, scrapers, bladelets and pièces escaillées. Bone tools include tanged spear points, darts and arrow points, needles, awls and perforators. Ornaments include beads, pendants, and arm-ring fragments; engraved bone and mammoth tusks as well as perforated mussel shell.
Fauna include fish, birds, marmot, beaver, hare, fox, wolf, brown bear, cave lion, reindeer, saiga, musk ox; dominant are mammoth and arctic fox.
Archaeology at Yudinovo
Yudinovo was first discovered in the 1930s by K. M. Polikarpovich, who also conducted the first excavations. Excavations have continued since that time, most recently led by G.A. Khlopachev. Approximately 800 square meters of the site have been excavated to date; the cultural layer is between 20 and 40 centimeters thick and lies between 1.8 to 2.5 meters below the current surface.
Sources
This article is a part of the About.com Guide to Upper Paleolithic, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Germonpré, Mietje, Mikhail Sablin, Gennady A. Khlopachev, and Galina V. Grigorieva in press Possible evidence of mammoth hunting during the Epigravettian at Yudinovo, Russian Plain. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology in press.
