Workshop Site of Kusimovo-6 — a Middle Paleolithic Monument in the Southern Transurals

Abstract

In 2019, the workshop site of Kusimovo-6 in Abzelilovsky District of Bashkortostan (Russia) was discovered and explored on a large area. A collection of Middle Paleolithic artifacts numbering over 2 thousand was obtained. Goals. The work attempts at an analysis of the collection. Results. The latter shows its homogeneity. So, nucleuses are subprismatic, with longitudinal cleavages, orthogonal, radial, and of unsystematic types. Many cores have two or more strike platforms. A third of the flakes have natural strike platforms and backrest. The producing of bifacial tools basically repeats the nucleuses’ production patterns. The tools comprise a chopper, 2 blanks of bifaces, 2 taiyak points, a point, butt knives. Two-sided producing was performed on working areas of other categories of tools (carvers, punctures, points, tools with a spike, beak-shaped, notched tools, scrapers). By all indications, the site has a non-Levallois character and belongs to the industry of the Tayacian tradition of the Middle Paleolithic. The workshop site of Kusimovo-6 reveals the greatest similarity with the 3rd and 4th layers (Tayacian industry of the Middle Paleolithic) of the Starye Duruitory Grotto in Northwest Moldova. Accordingly, the workshop site of Kusimovo-6 is dated to the first half of the Rissian period (300-200 thousand years ago).

Keywords

• middle paleolithic
• tayacian tradition
• technology
• typology
• southern transurals