This award supports a two-year project designed to investigate the earliest appearance of modern humans in Eastern Europe. It focuses on the excavation and analysis of archaeological sites located in the Russian village of Kostenki on the west bank of the Don River (roughly 450 km south of Moscow). The Kostenki sites have yielded the oldest known remains of modern humans in Eastern Europe, and even earlier traces of habitation that were probably left by modern humans more than 40,000 years ago. The new project will excavate the lowest human occupation layers of two of these sites (Kostenki 12 and 14) in order to expand our knowledge of the technology and economy of their occupants, and to establish with greater precision both their age and environmental setting. The research will bring together a team of American and Russian scientists from several fields, including archaeology, paleobotany, paleozoology, geology and geochronology.
One project goal is improved understanding of how the sites were formed, which apparently involved a complex interplay of wind and slope action, periodic flooding, soil formation, and possibly other processes. This goal is closely tied to better dating of the earliest occupation levels at Kostenki 12 and 14 and reconstruction of environmental conditions. A series of new absolute dates (radiocarbon and luminescence) and paleomagnetic samples will be obtained from these levels, and an effort will be made to relate the sequence of layers to global climate-change and paleomagnetic events between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago. Fossil pollen and spores will be collected for reconstructions of vegetation, which will be used in conjunction with the study of fossil soils to provide further support for correlations with the global sequence.
Excavations will be conducted at Kostenki 12 and 14 during July-August of 2002 and 2003. The expanded sample of artifacts, features (e.g., former hearths), and associated mammal remains recovered from the lowest occupation levels will yield information about the technology and economy of the modern humans who appeared in Eastern Europe at this time. In the context of how the sites were formed, study of the mammal remains-such as the body parts represented and the damage on them-will help determine whether they were hunted or gathered by humans or deposited by natural processes. Stone artifacts will be analyzed in terms of from where the stone was obtained and how the implements were manufactured and used (based on microscopic study of the wear on their edges). Artifacts of softer materials (chiefly bone and ivory) are of special interest, because their complexity suggests that modern humans may have achieved a quantum jump in technological ability over their Neanderthal predecessors in Europe. The project will explore the thesis that complex and innovative technology was critical to the survival of modern humans-recently derived from southern latitudes and morphologically adapted to warm climates-in the relatively cold and dry environments of Eastern Europe.
