Geoarchaeological prospection in the loess steppe: Preliminary results from the Lower Danube Survey for Paleolithic Sites (LoDanS)

Ioviţă, Radu; Doboş, Adrian; Fitzsimmons, Kathryn E.; Probst, Mathias; Hambach, Ulrich; Robu, Marius; Vlaicu, Marius; Petculescu, Alexandru

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2013.05.018

Cited by 27 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Lipniţa is a new locality (Iovita et al, 2014), previously unknown in the archeological literature with the exception of Neolithic tumuli found within the village of the same name (Papasima, 1993). The locality is a north-facing loess quarry northeast of the village and immediately south of the presently dry lower catchment of the Suha Reka (Bulgarian: "dry river"), which at this point forms an ephemeral channel (Canaraua Fetii; Telteu and Zaharia, 2012) linking three lakes connected to the Danube River ( Figure 1A).…”

Section: Localities Survey and Test Pitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The two localities discussed here, Lipniţa and Dealul Peşterica (DP), represent examples of archeological surveys undertaken in a landscape with thick sediment cover (Iovita et al, 2014). Small test pits (sondages) were dug to test the prospectivity of individual localities.…”

Section: Localities Survey and Test Pitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fluvial clasts are dominated by quartz and limestone, including flint-bearing calcareous material (Petrov and Yankov, 2017), infilled with a reddish clayey silt matrix similar to the overlying unit which may have been deposited during the initial stages of its deposition. We describe the overlying reddish clayey silts as "Red beds" (to disambiguate from the term paleosol used in Iovita et al, 2014). These unconformably overlie the basal gravels and comprise massive reddish clayey silts, minor sands, gravels and cobbles with some pedogenic development.…”

Section: Sedimentary Context Of the Lipniţa Locality And Antiquity Omentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This represents a manifold challenge. Sites may be rare, poorly preserved or fragmentary, evidence may be ambiguous, or sites may simply not yet have been discovered due to lack of survey efforts or challenging physical or political environments (Versaggi and Hohman, 2008;Verhagen et al, 2013;Iovita et al, 2014;Tourloukis, 2016). Optimal sites, which preserve uneroded, superposed stratigraphic layers containing unambiguous geological and archeological data, occur seldom.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Substantial and widespread volcanic ash deposits in the lower Danube catchment (Anechitei-Deacu et al, 2014;Veres et al, 2013), deriving from the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption coeval with modern human arrival into Europe and projected Neandertal extinction (Fedele et al, 2008), have further sparked animated debate (Lowe et al, 2012;Fitzsimmons et al, 2013). Despite recent attempts to locate additional archeological sites in the Danube corridor (Richter et al, 2012;Sitlivy et al, 2012;Iovita et al, 2014;Chu, 2018;Hauck et al, 2018;Mihailović, 2020), optimal sites in the conventional sense have been few (Schmidt et al, 2013;Schmidt et al, 2020) and have added little to substantiate the Paleolithic corridor hypothesis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Thinking Outside the Box at Open-Air Archeological Contexts: Examples From Loess Landscapes in Southeast Romania

et al. 2020

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Stratified, well preserved sites preserving unambiguous geological and archeological data from which human-environmental interactions can be reconstructed, are rare. More commonly we must test our hypotheses based on extrapolation of the few available sites, particularly in regions with high sedimentation rates. Here we test the idea of aggregating "off-sites"-human traces which provide isolated evidence of activity in an area-to maximize the information which can meaningfully be extracted from Paleolithic open-air contexts. We present two case studies from the sediment-rich loess steppe of southeast Romania, Lipniţa and Dealul Peş terica. Both off-sites preserve low density, undiagnostic lithic assemblages which may otherwise be overlooked in favor of more impressive sites. We constrain the timing of occupation at these two localities to c. 61 and 34-41 ka at Lipniţa and Dealul Peş terica, and show that people were present near a river bank and on loess slopes respectively. Aggregation of data from the region suggests repeated visitation of riverine landscapes; additionally people likely ranged across landforms, particularly where raw material for making stone tools was plentiful. Our case studies demonstrate that empirical, incremental findings may still be generated from sites traditionally thought to be of little value. We argue that this approach is highly applicable to investigating the human implications for landscape context from archeological traces in sediment-rich, open-air situations.

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Section: Localities Survey and Test Pitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Localities Survey and Test Pitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sedimentary Context Of the Lipniţa Locality And Antiquity Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Thinking Outside the Box at Open-Air Archeological Contexts: Examples From Loess Landscapes in Southeast Romania

et al. 2020

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Neanderthals on the Lower Danube: Middle Palaeolithic evidence in the Danube Gorges of the Balkans

Borić

Cristiani

Hopkins

et al. 2021

J Quaternary Science

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The article presents evidence about the Middle Palaeolithic and Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition interval in the karst area of the Danube Gorges in the Lower Danube Basin. We review the extant data and present new evidence from two recently investigated sites found on the Serbian side of the Danube River – Tabula Traiana and Dubočka‐Kozja caves. The two sites have yielded layers dating to both the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic and have been investigated by the application of modern standards of excavation and recovery along with a suite of state‐of‐the‐art analytical procedures. The presentation focuses on micromorphological analyses of the caves’ sediments, characterisation of cryptotephra, a suite of new radiometric dates (accelerator mass spectrometry and optically stimulated luminescence) as well as proteomics (zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry) and stable isotope data in discerning patterns of human occupation of these locales over the long term.

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Evidence for the oldest Middle Palaeolithic cave occupation in the Romanian Carpathians

Schmidt,

Veres,

Murătoreanu

et al. 2024

J Quaternary Science

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The Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites in the Carpathians and Danube lowlands constitute key contexts for tracing the dispersal of Homo sapiens into central‐western Europe and the replacement of Homo neanderthalensis. Surprisingly, the Romanian archaeological inventory lacks transitional technologies and only a few sites have been systematically excavated and numerically dated, explaining the incomplete understanding of the Middle Palaeolithic and hence Neanderthal population dynamics. Here we present new age constraints for the Abri 122/1200 and Peștera Mare caves in the Romanian Carpathians, obtained by radiocarbon dating of charcoal and bone and by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of cave sediments. Methodological issues and the method's upper limit cause grossly underestimated radiocarbon ages for charcoal from Abri 122/1200 and provide only minimum ages (>41–60 14C ka bp) for bones from Peștera Mare cave. However, the OSL ages suggest Middle Palaeolithic cave occupation in the Carpathians since early Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 7 and lasting at least until MIS 5. These ages reinforce the vast potential of Carpathian cave sites in solidifying our understanding of Neanderthal dynamics in the region and their habitats. We discuss the reliability of this new chronology and the archaeological implications for the Middle Palaeolithic of neighbouring areas.

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Geoarchaeological prospection in the loess steppe: Preliminary results from the Lower Danube Survey for Paleolithic Sites (LoDanS)

Cited by 27 publications

References 46 publications

Thinking Outside the Box at Open-Air Archeological Contexts: Examples From Loess Landscapes in Southeast Romania

Thinking Outside the Box at Open-Air Archeological Contexts: Examples From Loess Landscapes in Southeast Romania

Neanderthals on the Lower Danube: Middle Palaeolithic evidence in the Danube Gorges of the Balkans

Evidence for the oldest Middle Palaeolithic cave occupation in the Romanian Carpathians

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