Getahovit-2. New evidence of an Upper Palaeolithic settlement in northern Armenia

Abstract

The cave settlement at Getahovit-2 in Armenia has a proven record of human occupation from the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages, making it the third prehistoric cave site, after Aghitu-3 and Kalavan-1, to be known from this region. The current excavation of an Upper Palaeolithic horizon, discovered in 2014, has yielded a radiocarbon date placing the site within the Last Glacial Maximum, thus filling a gap in the archaeological record between the middle and late UpperPalaeolithic (between 24,000 and 18,000 cal. BP). The short-termoccupation by a group of hunters, revealed by the preliminaryresults, is interpreted with considerable likelihood as a stopduring a hunting expedition. Work at the cave site has beenresumed under the flag of a newly established Armenian-Polishresearch cooperation between the Institute of Archaeology andEthnography of the National Academy of Science of the Republicof Armenia and the Faculty of Archaeology of the University ofWarsaw.

Keywords

• Upper Paleolithic
• cave settlement
• Tavush
• Armenia