Palaeolithic Archaeology in the Mongolian People's Republic; A Report on the state of the art.

Abstract

This short paper summarizes current knowledge concerning the palaeolithic archaeology of the Mongolian People's Republic (‘Outer Mongolia’), although the paucity of well-documented assemblages and stratified sites makes it impossible to do more than comment on the nature of the material. A few early sites can be assigned to the Acheulean technocomplex and the Kazantsevo interglacial, but there is a more extensive group of surface middle palaeolithic assemblages in the Altai-Gobi area with close and dated typological parallels in northern China. At some of these localities, for example Arts Bogd in the southern Gobi, the first beginnings of the microblade tradition which characterizes the later Shabarakh complex of sites may be seen. These later sites, which form part of a remarkably uniform circumpolar epipalaeolithic dating to between 20–11,000BP, are associated with the gradual Late Pleistocene desertification of the Gobi.