Natural Scientifi c and Archaeological Evidence from the Pleistocene Layers of Kaminnaya Cave

This article discusses the results of a comprehensive study of Pleistocene sediments from Kaminnaya Cave located in mid-elevation erosional middle mountains of the Northwestern Altai, where a variety of material evidence on ancient human environment and culture has been found. The stratigraphic sequences of the site are constituted by loamy deposits often enriched by products of bedrock disintegration. Geomorphology, stratigraphy, biostratigraphy, and chronology of that karst site are discussed on the basis of palaeomagnetic studies, measurements of absolute age, and data on relative position of lithological units. It has been discovered that sedimentation in a considerable part of the cultural-bearing sediments in the cave occurred in the zone of overglacial forest-steppe, overglacial steppe and forest-steppe, and overglacial mountain-forest landscapes. It has been established that during the Sartan period, Kaminnaya Cave was a large habitation camp with complete cycle of lithic reduction and processing. This combination of camp and workshop could only be possible if there were sources of raw materials in the immediate vicinity. The assemblages of the site, belonging to different climatic-stratigraphic subdivisions of the Sartan glaciation, contained stone and bone artefacts from the Final Upper Paleolithic of the region. The petrographic properties of stone inventory and sources of raw materials have been identified, and typological and technological features of the techno-complexes have been analyzed. The toolkits contained a combination of the Upper Paleolithic and archaic types, typical of the Late Upper Paleolithic in Southern Siberia. The conclusion is that a stable cultural tradition of the ancient society was preserved for a considerable period of the Upper Paleolithic in the Northwestern Altai between 28,000 and 10,000 BP.