Fragments of mammoth tusk and handicrafts made from this material, which were found during excavations of the Yudinovo Upper Paleolithic Site (outskirts of village Yudinovo, Pogarskii district, ...Bryansk oblast, Russia), were studied by vibrational spectroscopy. The site consists of cultural horizons of different age, 15 000–13 500 BCE (lower) and 12 500–12 000 BCE (upper). The influence of the burial conditions on the relative content of A1, A2, and B carbonates and molecular water in the samples was studied. It is shown that the samples from the upper and lower cultural horizons of the site, according to the classification of carbonate distribution, correspond to apatite crystals of the А–В САр type. The factors affecting the spectroscopic characteristics of the samples were established, of which the lithological and moisture characteristics of the enclosing sediments should be considered the main ones.
Using IR reflectance spectroscopy, we studied the structural and chemical composition of the colored layer located on the surface of a female figurine made of a mammoth tusk from the East Gravettian ...site of Kostenki 1, layer I, aged 23 000–21 000 years. The site is located in the Kostenki village of the Khokholsky district of the Voronezh oblast of Russia. The figurine was at the bottom of the storage pit; there are the remains of red paint on it. The paint layer on the figure consists of alumina and gypsum; the coloring pigments are mainly iron oxides. The data obtained suggest that the technology used by the Paleolithic artist when painting the figurine of the Paleolithic Venus included the stage of preliminary preparation of the surface, that is, priming the treated surface with gypsum.
Sablin and Khlopachev report finds of two complete dog crania from the Upper Paleolithic site Eliseevichi I (central Russian Plain, Bryansk Region), dated to 13,000-17,000 C years B.P. Both crania ...are those of adult dogs. They resemble Siberian husky skulls in shape but are larger, with broad flat frontals.
Despite the extensive literature on the retrieval of digestible starches from archaeological contexts, there are still significant concerns regarding their genuine origin and durability. Here, we ...propose a multi-analytical strategy to identify the authenticity of ancient starches retrieved from macrolithic tools excavated at Upper Paleolithic sites in the Pontic steppe. This strategy integrates the morphological discrimination of starches through optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy with single starch chemo-profiling using Fourier transform infrared imaging and microscopy. We obtained evidence of aging and biomineralization in the use-related starches from Palaeolithic sites, providing a methodology to establish their ancient origin, assess their preservation status, and attempt their identification. The pivotal application of this multidisciplinar approach demonstrates that the macrolithic tools, from which starches were dislodged, were used for food-processing across the Pontic Steppe around 40,000 years ago during the earliest colonization of Eurasia by Homo sapiens.
Whether or not mammoth hunting was practised during the Late Palaeolithic has been a controversial issue ever since large accumulations of woolly mammoth bones associated with prehistoric artefacts ...were discovered more than 100 years ago. Detailed taphonomic and palaeobiological analyses of the mammoth bone complexes from the Epigravettian Yudinovo site in the Russian Plain were carried out. The combination of the homogeneous weathering rate of the mammoth bones, the isolated state of most of the skeletal elements, the restricted spatial range of the carnivore gnawing traces, the breakage pattern of the skulls and long bones, the sex ratio, the small body size of the adult mammoths, the age profile (with an important frequency of prime-aged cows), and the large number of individuals, suggest that the bone complexes at Yudinovo were constructed from body parts and bones that were extracted from freshly killed mammoths and that mammoth hunting was practised at this site during the Epigravettian.
We have considered an optical model of a porous rough surface with optical properties of objects (bone, flint) that are typical of archeology and paleontology. We have formulated an approach that ...makes it possible to perform mathematical processing of the IR reflection spectra of objects of this kind using standard algorithms and determine criteria that ensure obtaining reliable information on objects with a rough surface in the course of interpretation of frequencies in their IR reflection spectra. The potential of the approach has been demonstrated using as an example an investigation by the IR Fourier-transform reflection spectroscopy of mineralization processes of mammoth tusks from two paleolithic sites (14000 and 16000 BCE) located by the town of Yudinovo, Bryansk oblast, Russia.
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