Levallois Traditions in the Stone Industries of Northern Asia and North America

Abstract

A major accomplishment of archeological studies of the past decade in the area of investigation of the Paleolithic of Northern Asia is the discovery in the Altai Mountains, in Transbaikalia, in the Far East, and also in Mongolia of Paleolithic complexes characterized by the Levallois technique of stoneworking (Fig. 1). The terms "Levallois" and "Levallois technique" have appeared quite recently in the Siberian archeology of the Stone Age. In large measure, this is associated with the name of A. P. Okladnikov, who was the first to introduce this term into Siberian archeology when describing a flake of Levallois form, found by the geologist O. M. Adamenko in the Altai Mountains in deposits of the Middle Pleistocene.1 While at the outset the concept of "Levallois" was unusual and tentative in characterization of the Paleolithic cultures of Siberia, it is quite valid from a typological standpoint today, after the discovery and investigation of such sites as the caves of Strashnaia, Kara Bom, and Tiumechin in the Altai Mountains, and Varvarina Gora, Sannyi mys, and Tolbaga in Transbaikalia. The stone industries of these deposits reveal a number of diagnostic features peculiar to the classical traditions of the Levallois technique of Western Europe.