Fülöp Éva – Cseh Julianna szerk.: „Die aktuellen Fragen des Mittelpaläolithikums in Mitteleuropa”. „Topical issues of the research of Middle Palaeolithic period in Central Europe”. Tata, 20-23 October 2003. (Tudományos Füzetek 12. Tata, 2004)
Jan Michal Burdukiewicz–Andrzej Wisniewski: New Evidence of Middle Palaeolithic in South Poland
Oerel and Moershoofd (OIS 3 ). If these dates are right they challenge the concept of "depopulation" of areas to the north of the Carpathian and Sudeten Range during the pleniglacial and immediately after (OIS 4/3 ). 18 Site Ai furnished 51 flint artefacts, including seven tools. The latter group —apart from a side scraper and an implement fashioned from a core —included forms with marginal retouch. The lower level of site A2 is represented by 101 flint artefacts, including eight tools (fig, 12,). The latter were poor in diagnostic forms. The upper level of site A2 contained 50 artefacts, including six tools, similarly non diagnostic as in the older level. Site B furnished isolated finds in the form of a side scraper and a flake. All the objects were fashioned from erratic flint. In the light of typological data it is difficult to classify the described collections to any of the taxonomic unit of the closing stages of the Middle Palaeolithic or to so-called transitional taxonomic units. The artefacts were accompanied by the remains of steppe-tundra fauna, including the mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), horse (Equus sp.), and reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), as well as fish species, including pike (Esox lucius). The lower level of site A2 contained also traces of juniper charcoal (Juniperus sp.). At a distance of about 200 metres to the south of site A2, during the older and the younger occupation phase alike, there had been a number of undrained lake reservoirs with Nuphar, Nymphaea, Sphagnum, Sellaginella selaginoides and Pediastrum vegetation. Mineral-organic sediments of the reservoirs retained traces of animal bones from the same game species as occurred together with the lithic artefacts, except the reindeer and remains offish, including pike-perch (Stizostedion lucioperca). Pollen and macroscopic plant remains recovered from the lake sediments indicate that the older phase of occupation was associated with a slightly warmer climate. Palaeobotanic data suggests the occurrence of zones typical for this type of ecosystems. One of them was formed by a humid littoral and sublittoral zone, another —a zone of dry terraces which contained the concentration of artefacts, and a third —a ridge rising between the valleys. Evidence from Oporów, similar to the known remains from Zwoleri near Radom, 19 is an example, unique in Poland, of exploitation of lower terrace levels by the people of the Middle Palaeolithic. The last glaciation is a period to which it is possible to associate the fragment of an assemblage discovered in the SW area of the site at Haliéra street in Wroclaw. 20 Artefacts occurred on the surface of layer 11, one covering the earlier discussed material from the period of the Middle Polish glaciations, and in the floor of the silty mud layer 16 covering the moraine pavement. Basing on the results of archaeometric EPR analysis of bone remains the age of the level was estimated as around 50 ka (information from M. Wencka), At the same time stratigraphie analyses do not rule out an even older dating for the discussed culture level (Eemian interglacial, onset 18 cf. CHMIELEWSKI 1970. 19 SCHILD et al. 1988.; 2000. 20 WiSNiEWSKi 2003a.; 2003c. 140
