Recent discoveries of Aurignacian and Epigravettian sites in Albania

Abstract

Albania is a possible stepping-stone for the dispersal of Homo sapiens into Europe, since Palaeolithic traces (namely from the so-called Uluzzian culture) have been discovered in neighboring Greece and Italy. After two years of searching for evidence of modern humans in Albania we here report on excavated test trenches representing two time slices: an Aurignacian open-air site from southern Albania and two Epigravettian cave sites in central and northern Albania—areas heretofore archaeologically unknown. The new Albanian data fill a gap in the eastern Adriatic archaeological record for Marine Isotope Stages 3 and 2. Adding current knowledge of Late Pleistocene landscape evolution, a “contextual area model” can be constructed describing the habitats of these human populations.

Keywords:

• Albania
• Palaeolithic
• Aurignacian
• Epigravettian
• LGM
• contextual area model

Acknowledgments

The Collaborative Research Center 806 project titled “Our Way to Europe: Culture-Environment Interaction and Human Mobility in the Late Quaternary” (Cologne, Bonn, Aachen) is generously supported by the German Research Foundation. We would like to thank Janet Rethemeyer for kindly providing the AMS ¹⁴C dating results. Further thanks goes to the Albanian Institute of Archaeology for providing technical support. For their help we would like to thank all Albanian students and workers who participated in fieldwork. Finally, we also thank four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas C. Hauck

Thomas C. Hauck (Ph.D. 2010, University of Basel, Switzerland) is a lecturer and postdoctoral research fellow at Cologne University, Cologne, Germany. His research interests include Upper Palaeolithic human-environment interaction in the Balkans, and Middle and Upper Palaeolithic technology in general.

Rudenc Ruka

Rudenc Ruka (M.A. 2008, University of Tirana, Albania) is a research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Tirana. His research interests include Palaeolithic archaeology and lithic technology, and the Mesolithic in Albania.

Ilir Gjipali

Ilir Gjipali (Ph.D. 1999, Albanian Academy of Sciences, Tirana, Albania) is Head of the Prehistory Department at the Institute of Archaeology, Tirana. His research interests include the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic of Albania.

Jürgen Richter

Jürgen Richter (Ph.D. 1988, University of Erlangen, Germany) is Professor for Palaeolithic Prehistory at Cologne University, Cologne, Germany. His research interests include Old World Stone Age Archaeology, Palaeolithic (Europe), Middle and Late Stone Age (Africa), Neolithic (Rhineland and North Africa), Lithic Technology, Landscape Archaeology, Palaeodemography, Quaternary Stratigraphy, and Rock Art.

Oliver Vogels

Oliver Vogels (M.A. 2010, University of Cologne, Germany) is a Ph.D. candidate at Cologne University, Cologne, Germany. His research interests include Prehistoric music cultures, media theory in musicology and archaeology, hunter-gatherer demography and sociology, hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies, and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) based landscape archaeology.