The Lithic Industry of Obi-Rakhmat Grotto, Uzbekistan

Abstract

Obi-Rakhmat Grotto is situated 100 km northeast of Tashkent, Republic of Uzbekistan. The site was first studied in the 1960s and excavations through the 1970s yielded more than 40,000 stone artifacts. Excavations were renewed in 1998 with the goal of clarifying the archaeological, geological and environmental sequence. Based on studies of the 1998-1999 collections and a sample of artifacts with accurate provenience from earlier excavations, it is now possible to classify the Obi-Rakhmat industry as initial Upper Paleolithic, showing mixtures of Middle and Upper Paleolithic features. New AMS radiocarbon dates suggest that the local Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition began before 50 ka with the majority of lithic assemblages at Obi-Rakhmat spanning the interval from approximately 48 to 40 ka.

The Emergence of Ornaments and Art: An Archaeological Perspective on the Origins of “Behavioral Modernity”

“…Given the arguments in favor of an association of the Near Eastern IUP with modern humans, it is conceivable that such occurrences represent a further range extension of the latter into more northern latitudes, but the issue remains controversial (Krivoshapkin and Brantingham, 2004;Rybin, 2004). Because the directly dated human material (mandible and postcrania) from Tianyuandong (near Beijing, China) documents people with a modern anatomy in the Far East c. 35 ka 14 C BP (Trinkaus, 2005), in broad contemporaneity with Ksar 'Akil's "Egbert," it makes sense to assume that the intervening regions of central Asia and the Altaï also were settled by modern humans at that time.…”

Late Quaternary Caspian: Sea-Levels, Environments and Human Settlement

“…Significantly, there are very few authentic Upper Palaeolithic sites either in the central or eastern Caucasus or the Central Asia which age would exceed 12 ky. Obi-Rakhmat, the multi-layered Palaeolithic rock shelter in the western extension of the Tien Shan, yielded a series of C14 in the range of 54-56 to 19 ka BP. Several writers [45][46][47] based on the high rate of laminar blanks and lame-based tools combined with the low percentage of Levallois forms in its stone inventory; consider the site as corresponding to the Middleto Upper Palaeolithic transition. Vishnyatsky [48,49] provides typological and statistical arguments demonstrating that this industry lays within the Mousterian technical variability.…”

Radiocarbon and the Old World Archaeology: Shaping a Chronological Framework

“…However, only a small amount of 14 C data is currently available for Pleistocene sites (e.g. Vishnyatsky 1999;Derevianko 2001;Ranov et al 2002;Krivoshapkin et al 2006), and not many dates were generated for Holocene complexes (e.g. Harris et al 1996;Hall 1997;Levine and Kislenko 1997;Kuzmina 2008;Panyushkina et al 2008).…”