Liviu, Marta - Szőcs Péter Levente (szerk.): Catalogul colecţtiei de archeologie (Satu Mare, 2007)

Paleoliticul şi mezoliticul

The Paleolithic sites in the territory of Satu Mare County are grouped in the Northern side of the county, in Oaş Depression and on it’s border area with the plains of Someş and Tur. From geographic and cultural point of view, this region is part to the wider Upper Tisa Basin. This point of view makes relevant the proximity of the exceptional Paleolithic site of Korolevo, in the Trans-Carpathian Ukraine, close to the border of the county.

The first Paleolithic records in Oaş, were discovered in 1928, when the archaeologist Márton Roska made field research around Bixad. The first systematic research, however, was made by C. S. Nicolaescu-Plopşor in 1957, discovering the site from Boineşti-Be/avâra (or Coasta Boineştilor). The research was continued by Maria Bitiri between 1960 and 1969, at the Paleolithic sites from Oaş, of which the most important are: Boineşti-Be'/avâra, Remetea Oaşului-Şomoş I and II, Călineşti-Oaş I, II, III and IV, Turulung-Dealul Pustiu (or Pusztahegy). In the following 30 years, no archaeological excavations were made at the Paleolithic sites from Oaş. They were restarted during the last years (2005, 2006) at Boineşti and Remetea Oaşului by a team of Romanian and French researchers.

The Paleolithic sites from Oaş are placed on hills, which, unfortunately, are strongly eroded by rain and wind. Therefore, few of them are where the prehistoric settlements are better preserved. The sediments with Paleolithic evidence has a maximum of 0,70 meters in depth, and in the case of the settlements where there is a succession of cultural horizons, there are no sterile levels between them, therefore, the differentiation of the artifacts was done primarily according to the typological criteria.

Maria Bitiri identified in Oaş three cultural and chronological horizons of the Paleolithic Age. The first is considered as a final period of the Middle Paleolithic, with some elements suggesting already the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, therefore, it can be dated between 40.000

The Paleolithic and the Mesolithic

and 30.000 years before present. The following two stages belong to the Upper Paleolithic (between 30.000 and 10.000 years before present), the most of the sites found in Oaş being dated to this period.

Lacking the human remains, it is difficult to state who the people are, who populated the Oaş region at the end of the Middle Paleolithic? It is possible to assume that they were

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the last remnants of the Neanderthal humans, but it can be also assumed that they were the first modern humans passing the Balkans, from the Near East. It is certain, though, that the populations of the Upper Paleolithic belong to the modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens), our direct ancestors.

The lifestyle of the Paleolithic populations (especially of those of the Upper Paleolithic) can be reconstituted on the basis of the archaeological finds, and through comparison with the modern hunter-gatherer societies. The Paleolithic communities were probably small nomadic groups establishing recurrently in different places suitable for the main

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