ПРО ЕФЕМЕРНУ ЕПІПАЛЕОЛІТИЧНУ СТОЯНКУ В КРИМСЬКОМУ ПЕРЕДГІР'Ї: З ІСТОРІЇ ПОЛЬОВИХ ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ У КРИМУ 1990 РОКУ

Abstract

This paper presents materials from one of the Palaeolithic sites discovered by the author in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Crimea. The Hamak-Koba sediment pack was once tested, and some archaeological materials were recovered. These are few but rather informative and have been published for the first time now. Judging by the available data, Hamak-Koba is a short-term site of a mobile group of hunters. The remains of shells of the land snail Helix vulgaris, which were probably consumed as food, may indicate the Epipalaeolithic or Mesolithic age of the site and probably exclude the winter season of its visitation. The technical and typological features of the stone artefacts found, including blades with indications of intensive use and burnt endscrapers, are consistent with the assumption of the site's age therefore positioned somewhere between the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. An undisturbed horizon with artefacts and hearth remains was discovered during the test pitting. It also turned out that a significant part of the shelter is practically devoid of culture-bearing deposits. The locality suggests one of the points visited by early hunters while travelling through the exploited territory in search of resources. This version is supported by the features of the stone artefacts, which show signs of special selection and therefore belong to a part of a mobile toolkit, traces of intensive wear on them, and the location of the site in a rock shelter near convenient access to a plateau providing dominating heights and good observation points, although far from water sources.