A 41,500 year-old decorated ivory pendant from Stajnia Cave (Poland)

Abstract

Evidence of mobiliary art and body augmentation are associated with the cultural innovations introduced by Homo sapiens at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. Here, we report the discovery of the oldest known human-modified punctate ornament, a decorated ivory pendant from the Paleolithic layers at Stajnia Cave in Poland. We describe the features of this unique piece, as well as the stratigraphic context and the details of its chronometric dating. The Stajnia Cave plate is a personal 'jewellery' object that was created 41,500 calendar years ago (directly radiocarbon dated). It is the oldest known of its kind in Eurasia and it establishes a new starting date for a tradition directly connected to the spread of modern Homo sapiens in Europe.

High-accuracy methodology for the integrative restoration of archaeological teeth by using reverse engineering techniques and rapid prototyping

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Neanderthal subsistence, taphonomy and chronology at Salzgitter‐Lebenstedt (Germany): a multifaceted analysis of morphologically unidentifiable bone

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Back to the future: The advantage of studying key events in human evolution using a new high resolution radiocarbon method

“…Precise absolute dating of human bones or bone objects is crucial for understanding the chronological timing of cultural events in Palaeolithic Archaeology. In recent decades, many scientific studies have been published proposing the “earliest” or the “latest” finds in terms of dispersal, interaction, and demise of archaic humans [ 1 – 7 ], extinctions of animals [ 8 – 10 ], the emergence of innovative cultural behaviours [ 11 – 13 ], and interplays between hominins and climatic fluctuations [ 14 – 19 ]. The question arises, however, about how confident we really are about emerging hypotheses based on statistically debatable age models.…”

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