ESR Dating Herbivore Teeth within the Mousterian Layers at Šalitrena Pećina, Serbia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Overlooking the Ribnica River near Breždje in the Dinaric Mountains, central Serbia, Šalitrena Pećina records a continuous Late Pleistocene sedimentary sequence records over the Middle/Upper Paleolithic (MP/UP) transition. In the cave entrance, six sediment layers reach ~ 1.5 m thick. Layer 2's Neolithic artefacts overlie Layers 3-4's Gravettian artefacts. Layer 5 yielded distinctive Aurignacian artefacts. Layers 6a-e contains reddish brown sandy silt with 20-40% éboulis, hearths, and a Levallois industry having déjeté and transversal sidescrapers in the upper zones and bifacial artefacts at the bottom. AMS 14C has dated Layers 3-4 at ~ 24-25 ka, Layer 5 at ~ 31 ka, but most of Layer 6 exceeds the 14C dating limit. Since ESR can date tooth enamel from ~ 5 ka to > 2 Ma, with ~ 2-5% precision, five herbivore teeth from Layer 6 have been dated by standard and isochron ESR. For the volumetrically averaged sedimentary dose rates, > 30 sediment samples from 10 horizons within 30 cm of the teeth were analyzed by NAA. Cosmic dose rates were calculated by ramped box averaging, using geologic data about its sedimentary cover. Ten independent ESR dates for teeth from Layer 6d-e correlated with MIS 5b to early MIS 4.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24382