The Early Upper Paleolithic Site Crvenka-At, Serbia–The First Aurignacian Lowland Occupation Site in the Southern Carpathian Basin

Abstract

The Carpathian Basin is a key region for understanding modern human expansion into western Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene because of numerous early hominid fossil find spots. However, the corresponding archeological record remains less understood due to a paucity of well dated, contextualized sites. To help rectify this, we excavated and sampled Crvenka-At (Serbia), one of the largest Upper Paleolithic sites in the region to obtain radiometric ages for the archeological artifacts and evaluate their depositional context and subsequent site formation processes. Our results confirm that this locality represents a multiple-occupation Aurignacian site that dates to 36.4 ± 2.8 ka based on modeling of luminescence ages. Electrical resistivity tomography measurements indicate that the site formed on a sandy-gravelly fill terrace covered by overbank deposits. Complex grain size distributions further suggest site formation in contrasting depositional environments typically occurring alongside fluvial channels, at lakeshores, in alluvial fan or delta settings. The site is thus the closest (ca. 50 km) known Aurignacian site to the earliest undisputed modern human remains in Europe at the Peştera cu oase and some intervals of the occupation may therefore have been contemporaneous with them. This suggests that modern humans, during their initial settlement of Europe, exploited a wider range of topographic and ecological settings than previously posited. Our findings indicate that lowland areas of the Carpathian Basin are an important part of understanding the early settlement patterns of modern humans in Europe.

Sedimentology of a Late Quaternary lacustrine record from the south‐eastern Carpathian Basin

“…The slight offset between both OSL datasets may be related to the fading correction of the IR 50 signal or a slight overestimation of the pIRIR 290 signal, which was observed, e.g., in a Serbian loess-palaeosol sequence (Avram et al, 2020). While one might argue that dating quartz minerals would be favourable in aquatic settings, since these bleach fast, it has already been demonstrated from the nearby investigation at the archaeological sites Crvenka-At (Nett et al, 2021) that dating quartz in this basin is problematic. In-lake bleaching is probably dependent on how clear the lake is/how much light penetrates to the bottom.…”

“…The depressions are separated by longitudinal positive landforms. The ridge south-east of our coring site consists of silt-dominated and partly gravelly, presumably fluvial, overbank deposits, turning to sandy and gravel deposits downwards (Nett et al, 2021). From a tectonic point of view, the area under investigation is part of a dextral transpressive wrenching system bordering the Carpathian Basin in the south and creating closely neighbouring subsidence and uplift structures (Horváth et al, 2015;Sušić et al, 2016).…”

“…Separated from the Vršac Mountains by a small depression, this ridge was likely formed as a tectonic push-up. Inside this ridge, coarser deposits (sand, gravels) of presently unknown facies occur, bearing rich archaeological assemblages that are thought to testify to the presence of the earliest modern humans in Europe some 40 ka ago (Mihailović, 2011;Chu et al, 2014Chu et al, , 2016Nett et al, 2021).…”

“…While the chronology is challenging, the grain-size data allow an interpretation regarding the palaeoenvironmental development, and thereby place the nearby archaeological sites (Chu et al, 2014(Chu et al, , 2016Nett et al, 2021) in a corresponding context. In addition, we discuss this geoarchive in the context of loess sedimentation.…”

“…Across the border in Romania (c. 55 km east), the Peș tera cu Oase has yielded one of the earliest securely dated modern human fossils in Europe (c. 36-34 ka 14 C years BP, Trinkaus et al, 2003Trinkaus et al, , 2012 with Neanderthal admixture (Fu et al, 2015). In and around the Vršac Basin, rich Aurignacian sites and find spots occur, namely Crvenka-At, Românesţi, Cosava, Temeresţi, Tincova and Tabula Traiana (Mihailović, 2011;Anghelinu et al, 2012;Borić et al, 2012;Sitlivy et al, 2012Sitlivy et al, , 2014Chu et al, 2014Chu et al, , 2016Chu et al, , 2019Nett et al, 2021). Given the ongoing discussion concerning the role of climate in Late Pleistocene population turnover in the region (Müller et al, 2011;Staubwasser et al, 2018;Alex et al, 2019), the Vršac core may provide a valuable cross-check to local palaeoenvironmental reconstructions for late surviving Neanderthal populations and the earliest modern humans in Europe, as derived from loess data (Schmidt et al, 2013;Kels et al, 2014;Obreht et al, 2017).…”