Découverte des sites du Paléolithique inférieur au Nord de l’Arménie

Abstract

For a long time, the scientific community assumed that the Acheulean culture was expressed on the territory of the Armenian Plateau as well as in the neighboring regions of the Caucasus only by its late phase; therefore, it appeared in the second half of the Middle Pleistocene. In recent years, the Armenian-Russian mission has discovered and studied much older Acheulean industries sites, located in northern Armenia (the Lori intermountain Depression). These industries, represented by archaic type tools (large hand axes, picks, choppers, chisel-like tools, scrapers, points, etc.), are discovered in three deposits of origin of proluvial genesis. In the Karakhach site, this type of industry is deposited in the lower levels of volcanic tuff and below; the U/Pb study of this level of tuff proposes a series of dates, assigned to the time interval between 1.944+0.046 and 1.75+0.02 Ma. The paleomagnetic study demonstrated the inverse polarity on the tuff and the normal polarity of the underlying deposits; in correlation with other dating, this fact allows to attribute the Acheulean layers of the site of Karakhatch to the Lower Pleistocene, in particular to the Oldoway episode and to the Upper Matuyama time period. The estimated age and the techno-morphological characteristics of the tools indicate the Lower Acheulean period. The dating of the Muradovo site does not seem possible, however its very old industries and the archaeological layers, where they were discovered, find equivalents in the layered layer, surmounted by tuffs, of the Karakhatch site. The Kutran I site presented a paleosol sequence with similar Acheulean tools (hand axes, picks, choppers, etc.). Its oldest layer is older than 1.5Ma, the upper layer is attributed to the early Middle Pleistocene; this fact means that it is possible to speak of the Lower Acheulean and of its transition to the Middle Acheulean period. The specific character and the age of the Lower Acheulean of Armenia admit that it could have formed independently of the Lower Acheulean of Africa, whose estimated age does not rise before 1.76Ma. It should also be noted that on the neighboring territory of Georgia about the same time when appeared the Acheulean culture in Armenia, the Oldowan Dmanisi site already existed.