An Area With Burins on the Late Paleolithic Site Near the Kamianka Village
Abstract
The Late Paleolithic site near the Kamianka village of the Izium district of the Kharkiv region was found in the 2004. The total excavation area is 225 square meters; the collection of findings consists of 9533 artefacts.
The cultural layer is determined by the findings spread level; it doesn’t have any specific colour, it contains animal bones fragments, pieces of ochre, chipped flint. The greatest concentration of findings is observed in the pale-yellowish loam, which belongs to the Upper Black Sea region subhorizon. The cultural layer planigraphical structure contains assemblage of the flint artefacts which probably correspond to the places of work.
On the site territory the full cycle of the flint raw material processing took place. The tools set contain burins, end-scrapers, thumb flint-like and notched tools, borers, backed microblades. On the whole it is typical for the Epigravettian sites.
The particularity of the area researched in 2019 is quite sizable, as for this site , burins concentration – 7 exemplars on three square meters comparing to 20 exemplars from the whole excavated area and surface finds. The tools are represented primary with straight dihedral burin types; there are also an angle dihedral burin and a double burin. As drafts, flakes and semiprime core trimming element were used. The distance between all burins doesn’t exceed several dozens of centimetres. Such concentration of the tools of one type on a small area may witness for their manufacturing and/or usage.
The second particularity of this area is presence of big amount of silicified wood fragments. On the area researched in the previous years, single small pieces were sometimes found, and on 9 square meters they count up to hundred fragments. Some of them resemble to the processed ones, with even or rounded borders. It is known that in the region of the middle reaches of the Siverskyi Donets there is a location of silicified wood. The amazing thing is not the silicified wood fragments presence in the cultural layer, but its concentration in a narrow area.
The excavations of the new site area near the Kamianka village gave interesting material, which not only replenished the tools collection, but also provided information on the site spatial structure.
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