Archaeology: Mammoth Bone Settlements

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Mammoth Bone Settlements Feb 24th 2012, 10:07 Mammoth Bone Settlements, thankfully abbreviated MBS, consist of between one to six huts built of mammoth bone coupled with hearths and storage pit features. Located in central Europe--most are in Ukraine--they primarily date to the late Upper Paleolithic. But dating them has always been a bit problematic. Diorama display at the American Museum of Natural History, based in part on Mezhirich Mammoth Bone Settlement. Photo by Wally Gobetz The first radiocarbon dates from the MBS in Ukraine returned dates extending well back into the Upper Paleolithic of some 20,000 years ago. More recent AMS dates suggest the majority of them date only between 14,000-15,000 years ago, what scholars are calling the Epi-Gravettian of the Late Upper Paleolithic. But there's still one persistent outlier: Molodova, where unarguably Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals built a mammoth bone hut, and had pit features and hearths very similar to those later ones. Molodova in the Dniester valley dates some 30,000 years older than such settlements in the Dnieper valley: very strange indeed. More on Mammoth Bone Settlements Molodova I Mezhyrich Gontsy

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