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This paper presents preliminary results of fieldwork conducted at the Upper Palaeolithic open-air site Mitoc-Malu Galben in northeastern Romania. The site has a ~14m deep loess-paleosol sequence with a rather high climatic resolution. The chronostratigraphy is well established and embedded in this long sequence are abundant archaeological remains, mostly attributed to the Aurignacian and Gravettian. Our fieldwork between 2013 and 2016 provided new samples of the main Aurignacian and Gravettian layers. Here we provide an overview of our fieldwork activities, the generated archaeological collections, and present a preliminary analysis of raw material economy and blank production and core exploitation strategies of the Gravettian assemblages. We also discuss the Mitoc-Malu Galben Gravettian in its wider regional context and implications for the Aurignacian-Gravettian transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper gives an overview of the Aurignacian/EUP sites in Eastern Austria and presents preliminary results of an analysis of never-before-published lithics from the well-known site of Willendorf II. Preliminary results of typological and technological analyses (raw material studies, attribute analysis, and refitting) are presented. In comparison to the local late Middle Palaeolithic, to the Bohunician, and to the Szeletian, it indicates clear differences in reduction strategies. Further, the regional sequence in the Middle Danube Area from 45,000 to 30,000 BP is presented, and the various techno-complexes and their relationships are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Willendorf II provides the longest and best-studied MIS 3 sequence in the Middle Danube region, and represents one of the key reference sequences for this time period in Central Europe. The assemblage chosen for analysis derives from archaeological horizon (AH) 5, attributed to the period of the first Gravettian between 30 and 27 ka uncal. BP. Previous analyses were all based on a selected inventory (mainly tools and cores) derived from the 1908/1909 excavations. The discovery of labelled wooden boxes containing numerous additional artefacts from the 1908/1909 excavations at the end of the 1990s in the cellar of the Natural History Museum in Vienna considerably raises the total number of finds for all archaeological horizons, and opens new perspectives for investigating Upper Palaeolithic behavioural variability in the Middle Danube region. For the first time, all artefacts have been assigned to a raw material source area, thus providing a picture of the geographic extent of the foraging territory, and allowing for quantified observations on raw material economy and technological variability in the early Gravettian of the Middle Danube region. Willendorf II provides an excellent basis for the study of Gravettian lithic assemblage variability due to the wide array of local and nonlocal lithic resources available at varying distances from the settlement. Source provenance information and patterns of raw material use offer complementary measures of mobility. We discuss the results in the light of the concepts of “technological provisioning” developed by S.L. Kuhn. Distance to source alone is not suitable to predict and explain raw material frequencies and the character of transported technologies on nonlocal material at Willendorf II-AH5. We argue that other factors such as the degree of anticipation of foreseeable activities and occupation span might account for the observed economic patterns. Our results clearly have broader relevance for understanding assemblage variability in the Gravettian of Central Europe and further afield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Korman' 9 is a newly discovered Upper Palaeolithic site in the Middle Dniester valley (Ukraine). Here we present chronostratigraphic, palaeoenvironmental, chronological, lithic and faunal data. Within a ~4 m deep sequence we have identified four Archaeological Layers (AL 0 to III) and AL I can be attributed to the Epigravettian, AL II most probably to the Epigravettian (small sample size), and AL III most probably to the Gravettian. AL 0 is too small to allow a cultural attribution. Lithic analysis for AL I shows microblade technology and a toolkit dominated by microliths (backed and marginally retouched microblades and bladelets). Faunal analysis demonstrates that exploitation focuses on reindeer and horse. The archaeological results fit well into the regional Upper Palaeolithic record, and the correlations with sites like Molodova V, Korman' IV, Cosautsi, and Dorochivsti III are well established. Our results allow us to conclude that humans were present at Korman' 9 during the Last Glacial Maximum under arctic (AL II and AL III) and sub-arctic (AL I) conditions. We also discuss implications for our findings for the discussion of human presence/absence during cold and arid conditions around the Last Glacial Maximum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitoc–Malu Galben (Romania) is one of the key-sites for the Upper Palaeolithic in Eastern Europe, with abundant Upper Palaeolithic archaeological layers embedded in a ∼14 meters long loess-palaeosol sequence. The excavations in 1978–1990 yielded rich remains of Aurignacian and Gravettian workshops. From 1992 to 1995, an international collaboration helped better define their stratigraphical position, age, and typological characteristics. Since 2013, our team has conducted new fieldwork focusing on interdisciplinary study of site formation processes and a detailed technological study of the lithic artefacts. These different excavation phases have employed quite substantially different fieldwork methodologies. Here, we explore the impact of the changing excavation methodologies on the comparability of the generated assemblages by analyzing the frequency of bladelets among the elongated blanks as well as the length distribution of elongated blanks. Our preliminary study allows us to suggest that some of the assemblages seem to be influenced by the fieldwork methodology employed by each excavation phase, but more studies are needed to start to understand how the assemblages are biased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]