Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 47 (4) 2019   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2019.47.4.003-015

Annotation:  A Neanderthal Refugium in the Eastern Adriatic Ushbulak—A New Stratifi ed Upper Paleolithic Site in Northeastern Kazakhstan Archaeological Findings on Suchu Island (Excavation Area I, 1975) Burial with a Chariot at the Tabyldy Cemetery, Central Kazakhstan Objects of Portable Art from a Bronze Age Cemetery at Tourist-2 The Use of 3D-Modeling for Reconstructing the Appearance and Function of Non-Utilitarian Items (the Ceramic Protomes of Horses from Late Bronze to Early Iron Age Sites in the Southern Taiga Zone of Si “Portrait” Medallions from the Kazym Hoard A Runic Inscription at Sarykoby (Southeastern Altai) The Ussuriysk Tortoise—A 13th Century Jurchen Monument Turkic Inscriptions in Cyrillic on 14th–15th Century Eastern European Lithic Artifacts The Topography of Ritual Buildings in Villages of the Tobolsk Governorate (Late 19th to Early 20th C Mesolithic Human Teeth from Zamostye-2, Moscow Region The Physical Anthropology of the Odino People, Western Siberia A Study of Human Bones from a Dwelling at Ust-Voikar, in the Subarctic Zone of Western Siberia   

A Neanderthal Refugium in the Eastern Adriatic

A.V. Vishnevskiy¹, K.K. Pavlenok², M.B. Kozlikin², V.A. Ulyanov^{2, 3}, A.P. Derevianko², and M.V. Shunkov²

¹Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Koptyuga 3, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

²Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

³Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskie Gory 1, Moscow, 119991, Russia

On the basis of mineralogical analysis of the tephra layer in the Bioce rock shelter in Montenegro, we revise the cultural and population changes in the eastern Adriatic at the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. The disappearance of Neanderthals from that region was traditionally attributed to the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption ~40 ka BP. Comprehensive studies at Bioce by the Russian-Montenegrin expedition in 2010-2015 have resulted in a hypothesis that a Neanderthal refugium existed in the Balkans. We list the lithological and stratigraphic characteristics of the Pleistocene sequence of the site and describe four main strata. Petrographic and x-ray phase analyses and scanning electron microscopy suggest that minerals from samples of ground from horizon 1.3 are of volcanic origin. The comparison of tephra from that horizon with those from local sequences in terms of composition, shape, and size of particles reveals similarity with the Y-5 tephra from the main phase of the Campanian eruption, dating to 39.30-39.85 ka BP. In the habitation sequence of Bioce, the tephra layer is inside lithological stratum 1. Artifacts from that layer and from the overlying and underlying ones, judging by technological and typological criteria, belong to one and the same lithic industry—the micro-Mousterian facies of the local Middle Paleolithic. New findings imply that the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption did not cause the disappearance of the culture associated with Neanderthals in the eastern Adriatic.

Keywords: Eastern Adriatic, Middle Paleolithic, Bioce rock shelter, Campanian Ignimbrite eruption, Neanderthal refugium