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EFCHED

Neanderthal climate preferences and tolerances: the need for a better chronology

With our research in Russia and the Ukraine, we set out to investigate whether the present chronological data for Late Mousterian sites in Europe are biasing our perception of Neanderthal populations by making them appear more cold-adapted than the incoming anatomically modern humans.

The present data suggest that Neanderthals may have occupied the area 42-26ka, when it was cooler and more climatically variable, rather than the warmer earlier period 58-42ka.

We chose to focus on the part of the Neanderthal world that experienced the most continental climate: European Russia and the Ukraine north and east of the Black Sea.

Here, any discernable preferences would be most significantly influenced by environmental factors due to the extreme continental climate.

The areas selected included the foothills of the north-west Caucasus, the plains of southern Russia, and the foothills in the south of the Crimean Peninsula.

A map of the study area, showing the archaeological sites sampled in this project. Image: R Housley

Image: A map of the study area, showing the archaeological sites sampled in this project.

We have applied a range of cross-validated non-14C chronological methodologies (OSL, TL, palaeomagnetic intensity, and tephrachronology) to a series of late Middle Palaeolithic site assemblages, and in particular to materials including burnt stone, windblown sediment and volcanic microtephra.

We made a small number of additional 14C measurements on sites where the existing 14C chronology was lacking or inadequate. We anticipated that the results of such dating analyses should identify spatial and temporal patterns which when correlated with local environmental proxies and wider climate data (in this instance pollen and sedimentology), would improve our understanding of Neanderthal climate tolerances.

Five of our major findings and achievements

1. We investigated 16 Middle Palaeolithic sites from five regions in southern Russia and the Ukraine. The results were put into the context of existing archaeological, environmental and chronometric information, most of which has been published only in Russian. All of this information was collated and translated into English, providing an essential new resource for those conducting research in the area.

EFCHED project members sampling the re-opened sections at Monasheskaya Cave. This site has a rich late Mousterian lithic assemblage and the anatomical remains of a Neanderthal. Image: R Housley2. From the 16 sites investigated, 520 samples were brought back to the UK for grain size analysis, magnetic susceptibility, palynology, AMS 14C and microtephra. A further 400 samples were taken for exploratory OSL profiling, quantitative OSL and TL dating. Approximately 300kg of material was sampled and archived. A prioritised sub-set of this material was analysed in the laboratory. From this analysis we identified a series of stratigraphic profiles whose sediments show trends in particle size distribution, palaeomagnetic intensity and OSL properties.

3. Several sites, including Kabazi II and Malaya Vorontsovskaya, have yielded likely multiple volcanic microtephra horizons that provide valuable temporal markers and are the key to interpreting wider regional correlations between sites. We obtained OSL and TL ages for comparison with existing, mostly 14C based, chronologies. Our results suggest that the relationship between the methodologies is complicated, most likely influenced by factors like site lithology and the fluctuation in atmospheric 14C concentration levels possibly linked to the Laschamp magnetic event.

4. New age determinations from cultural horizons III, IV and V at Kostenki 12 suggest that the earliest Upper Palaeolithic in the Russian Plains is substantially earlier than the latest Middle Palaeolithic in the Black Sea area. The same conclusion may be inferred from luminescence analyses at Biriuchya Balka 2. This could indicate that anatomically modern humans expanded into the steppe region north of the Black Sea in the warmer earlier part of OIS3 and that it was not until the cooler latter part of OIS3 that competition with Neanderthals for territories and resources developed.

Present-day vegetation in the foothills of the western Caucasus. Image: C Burbidge

Photograph: Present-day vegetation in the foothills of the western Caucasus.

5. We made a major effort to bring together existing Russian palynological evidence to produce a regional climatic framework within which to interpret the new chronological data.

We conclude that the relationship between Neanderthals and climate is discernible in the sedimentary sequences from the studied sites, and can be related to the pollen regional framework to a degree. But establishing a sufficiently precise and robust chronology that permits correlation with the high-frequency Dansgaard/Oeschger millennial events has proved to be a major challenge.

This summary was compiled by Rupert Housley, who is also the PI for this project.

Additional project members include:

UK: David Sanderson, Nick McCave, David Pyle, Christopher Burbidge, Philip Allsworth-Jones, Oliver Bazely, Tjeerd van Andel, Simon Crowhurst
Germany: J. Richter, D. Richter, T. Uthmeier
Russia: M. V. Anikovich, E. V. Belaeva, N. I. Hidjrati, V. P. Liubin, G. M. Levkovskaya, A. E. Matiukhin, A. A. Sinitsyn
Ukraine: V. P. Chabai, N. Gerasimenko, A. I. Yevtushenko