Abstract

The early Upper Palaeolithic epoch in the north-west Caucasus is represented only by two sites. Korotkaya Cave, whose small area was investigated, contains few materials while the reference site for studying the Upper Palaeolithic in the North-West Caucasus is Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Apsheron district of the Krasnodar region. The earliest Upper Palaeolithic layer of the cave (1C layer) is between 40–37 thousand years old. The archaeological complex of this layer contains all categories of stone products, including tools, semi-finished chipped stone tools, their chips, waste products, cores and allows reconstructing the technology of splitting stone material. Technological analysis of Mezmaiskaya cave’s 1C layer industry has demonstrated that the early Upper Palaeolithic period in the North-West Caucasus was dominated by the technique of splitting stones into microchips in order to produce chips and microchips, 3–12 mm wide. Preference was given to high-quality flint that reached the site either in the form of ready lamellar blanks and prepared pre-cores, or in the form of pieces of flint and large flakes; the latter were regularly used to create butt cores. The analysis of the cores, technical chips and blanks allows establishing two technological chains: first, chipping chips, 7–12 mm wide, from prismatic one- and two-table cores and, second, producing microchips, 2–7 mm wide, from butt cores, some of which are made on solid flakes. The study of the metric and morphological characteristics of the chips shows the employment of stone-chipping techniques by striking with a soft, possibly stone, chipper. Mezmaiskaya cave’s 1C layer toolkit and splitting technology find analogies in the territory of the South Caucasus and the Middle East. The industries of these areas, as the material from the 1C layer of Mezmaiskaya cave, are characterized by predominance of chips and microchips, mainly knocked from single-table cores with a narrow splitting surface.