The Oldest Evidence for Human Habitation in the Baltic Region: A Preliminary Report on the Chronology and Archaeological Context of the Riadino‐5 Archaeological Site

Abstract

We report the discovery of the oldest evidence for human presence in the southeastern Baltic Sea region. This paper presents an overview of the Riadino‐5 archaeological site in the lower course of the Šešupė River (Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia) and direct infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) ages for the culture‐bearing sediments from the site, which place the time of occupation well within the range of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 (ca 57–26 ka). Luminescence ages were determined using the multiple‐aliquot additive‐dose technique, applied to sand‐sized potassium feldspar. Four of the six IRSL samples from the site come from the cultural deposits, while two are from the surrounding sediments. The luminescence age of the deposits implies that human occupation of the southeastern Baltic Sea region occurred at least between 50 ka and 44 ka during the first half of MIS 3 and the Middle‐Upper Paleolithic.

The lower reaches of the Nemunas River at the end of the Last (Weichselian) Glacial and beginning of the Holocene

“…Late Weichselian), but also into the Mid dle Weichselian depos its. This is ev i dent from the IRSL dat ing re sults ob tained at the Riadino-5 ar chae o log i cal site (Druzhinina et al, 2016), but this sit u a tion has not been re flected in the palaeogeographic recon struc tions (Fig. 4) due to very lim ited geo log i cal data, and also the small scale of the palaeo geo logi cal cross-sec tions.…”

“…Thus, in both cases the Nemunas River and its trib u tar ies -the ŠešupÅ River and the Jñra River -saw sig nif i cant lin ear ero sion. The re sults of age de ter mi na tion of the al lu vium of the third overbank ter race in the lower reaches of the ŠešupÅ River var ied in time from 11.7 to 7.5 ka (Druzhinina et al, 2016), i.e. a very wide age inter pre ta tion of sed i men ta tion is pos si ble.…”

“…This geo log i cal sec tion was dis cov ered and in ves ti gated in de tail dur ing ar chae o log i cal ex ca va tions in 2009-2011 and is known as the Riadino-5 ar chae o log i cal site (Druzhinina, 2012(Druzhinina, , 2013. The ex ca va tion was sup ple mented by the in ves ti ga tions of lithostratigraphy, geo chem is try and chronostrati graphy, dat ing by ra dio car bon ( 14 C) and in fra red stim u lated lu mi nes cence (IRSL) dat ing (Druzhinina, 2012;Druzhinina et al, 2016).…”

“…The sam ple of char coal (8800 ± 600 yrs BP cal i brated at the 95.4% level to 11718-8446 cal yrs BP) is re lated to the lower part of the al lu vial sand; the radio car bon age ob tained is roughly in ac cor dance with the IRSL date for a sed i ment sam ple (8.1 ± 0.6 ka) taken from the same layer. The IRSL dates for the sed i ment units un der ly ing the al luvial sand (deeper 0.6 m) show a 44.0 ± 3.4-62.1 ± 4.6 ka age that al low at trib ut ing them to the Mid Weichselian (Druzhinina et al, 2016).…”

“…The al lu vial sand over lies a sed i men tary unit (0.5-0.6 m) which con sists of red dish-brown, ferruginous loamy sand, un sorted, with high gravel con tent. A layer of coarse and me dium-grained light grey sand, with an ad mix ture of gravel, com prises the low est part of the sec tion -from 0.6 m and deeper (Druzhinina et al, 2016). In some places, the sub-hor i zon tal layer ing is de stroyed by palaeo-seismodeformation struc tures (sand diapirs) that are char ac ter is tic for post-gla cial de pos its of the south east ern Bal tic (Bitinas and LazauskienÅ, 2011;Bitinas, 2012;Nikonov, 2013).…”