Toward a New Outline of the Soviet Central Asian Paleolithic [and Comments and Reply

Abstract

The ideas about the distribution of the earliest sites in Soviet Central Asia and the character of Paleolithic industries which have been formed by Western archaeologist through the works of Movius, Klein, and Chard are now in need of revision because of the appearance of new material. The increasing possibility of worldwide synchronization of geological and climatological events permits the comparison of the subdivisions of the Soviet Central Asian stratigraphic scheme with those of the Alpine one and the formulation of the following conception of the periodization and chronology of the Paleolithic of Central Asia: The earliest traces of Paleolithic man are from Riss times (this is not to exclude the possibility of an extension of this age with future investigations of the thick loess sections of the southern Tadzhikistan and Pri-Tashkent regions). The existence of a pebble culture resembling the Soan in the interval between 200,000 and 130,000 years B.P. has been established. After the following hiatus of approximately 60,000 years in several regions of Soviet Central Asia, developed Mousterian industries in caves and at open sites have been documented. These Mousterian industries may be divided into five variants or facies: Levallois, Levallois-Mousterian, Typical Mousterian, Mousterian of Soan Tradition, and Denticulate Mousterian. As early as the 1940s, A. P. Okladnikov focused attention on the similarity of the Levallois technique in the Near East to that of Soviet Central Asia, but this similarity is not necessarily the result of a direct migration. The Upper Paleolithic, represented by a small number of sites, by all appearances grew out of a preexisting facies of the Soviet Central Asian Mousterian. The absence of radiocarbon dates for this period, however, makes it difficult to come to final conclusions. The possibility exists of a longer persistence of the Mousterian technique in Soviet Central Asia and a correspondingly later appearance of the Upper Paleolithic modes of working stone. For the following period, the authors distinguish two groups: Mesolithic and Epi-Paleolithic. The first group is characterized by the presence of geometric microliths, predominantly lunates and backed points; in the second group these tools are not found. In general, for the entire extent of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic two technological tendencies existed, one of which can be described in terms employed in the Near East and Europe and the other of which (the pebble industry) cannot. Possible explanations of this situation are examined.