Magura Cave, Bulgaria: A multidisciplinary study of Late Pleistocene human palaeoenvironment in the Balkans
Introduction
Modern-day Bulgaria occupies a crucial geographical position between Asia and Europe, with potential routes to and from central and western Asia to the north or south of the Black Sea, the latter also ultimately providing a link to the African continent (Sirakov et al., 2010, Ivanova et al., 2012a). The Danube corridor has always been a critical route for early human migration (Mellars, 2006, Mellars, 2011) as evidenced by the large number of Palaeolithic sites in the region and in Bulgaria in general, and the hills, river and adjacent floodplains of the area provided early hominins with abundant raw materials of flint and quartzite for lithic tool manufacture, as well as considerable plant and animal resources. Pleistocene sites in Bulgaria with evidence of human activity range in chronology from the Lower Palaeolithic (e.g Kozarnika at 1.4 Ma; Guadelli et al., 2005, Ivanova, 2009, Sirakov et al., 2010) through to the Epigravettian (e.g. Kozarnika, Bacho Kiro and Temnata Dupka) and include cave sites as well as inland and coastal open air sites (see Table S1 in Supplementary Information [SI]). The latter two sites are particularly relevant to the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transitional period covered in this paper (Kozłowski, 1982, Kozłowski et al., 1992, Ginter et al., 1994, Ginter et al., 2000). Many of the sites shown in Table S1 were investigated in older studies, although there is now an accumulation of more recent research and publications related to the better known Palaeolithic settlements.
Here we report on dating, environmental finds and some lithic tools from Late Pleistocene layers from excavations of two trenches in Magura Cave, undertaken during field seasons of 2011 and 2012, providing an environmental background for human occupation and dispersals in the region between about 60 ka and 30 ka. The Balkans are seen as a critical region for refugial populations of plant and animal taxa during the Late Pleistocene and as one of the three core centres for Neanderthal occupation and expansion at this time (Churchill, 2014). The main purpose of this paper consists in presenting a multidisciplinary study of one of the most interesting and promising Palaeolithic cave sites in Bulgaria, which is part of a larger project on Late Pleistocene environments and human adaptation in the Balkans. The data recovered (from lithic, faunal, aDNA, pollen and coprolite analyses, and chronological precision through 14C and tephra dating) offer an opportunity for subsequent correlation with other sites on regional and supra-regional scales. The aim is to assess the influence of environmental factors in this region during the Late Pleistocene on dispersals of plants and mammals, including hominins.
Section snippets
Site location and history
Regionally, Magura Cave is situated in the western part of the Balkan Mountains (Stara Planina), a range which spans north-western to central Bulgaria, the Thracian plain lying to the south-east of the range, and the plain in turn fringed by the Rhodope Mountain range at its western edge (see Fig. 1). The River Danube lies about 25 km to the north-east of Magura, the Danube valley linking Central Europe and the Balkans with the Black sea coastal zone. Magura Cave is located on Rabisha Hill
Trench I
The excavations in Trench I reported here from 2011 to 2012 started at layer 13. The trench has dimensions of 3.5 × 3.0 m, the floor surface area of which decreases with depth (reaching 7.5 m) and has revealed 45 distinctive lithostratigraphic layers (Fig. 3), scarce knapped lithic artefacts and rich faunal remains.
From the bottom of the trench at 7.50 m (layer 45) to layer 35 a sequence of rubble and clayey sand layers is evident, with presence of faunal remains. Sedimentation of layer 40,
14C dating
Trench I: Six samples were taken from Trench I for AMS 14C dating at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU) (Table 1: see SI for Methods). Samples OxA-29992 through to OxA-29995 were taken from the museum in Vidin and are clearly Holocene in age; the calibrated dates for these are given in Fig. S1 in the SI. There is no layer noted as they were not collected during archaeological excavations, but during the building of the winery. The two samples of relevance here are OxA-29785 (M/I/81)
Stratigraphy and environmental proxies
The aim here is to interpret environmental change at Magura over the time period represented, from the different proxies available, and to place the archaeology and hominin presence within this context. Information comes from two different trenches with different sedimentary sequences and scarce archaeology and it is not possible to establish direct stratigraphical correlations on a layer by layer basis. Correlation relies instead on absolute dates but the potential exists, when excavation on
Magura Cave in a regional palaeoenvironmental context
The Balkan and Carpathian regions are seen as two of the most important glacial refugial areas for mammals in Europe during the last cold stage (Sommer and Nadachowski, 2006) up to and including the Last Glacial Maximum, providing centres for the recolonization of Europe by a large number of different mammal taxa. Vegetational studies by Willis et al. (2000) concluded that central and south-eastern Europe provided an important cold-stage refugium for flora (and fauna) from late MIS 3 up to and
Hominin presence at Magura Cave
It has been noted (Verpoorte, 2006) that constraints on Neanderthal physiology would have made their mobility in the landscape costly and that areas of persistent Neanderthal occupation were located in regions with mosaics of different biomes (Davies et al., 2015) thus enabling them to minimise costly mobility and maximise access to resources. Ecotones within this mosaic landscape, for instance the woodland-steppe boundary, may even have been advantageous to Neanderthals using ambush hunting
Conclusions
The interdisciplinary investigations at Magura Cave have recovered evidence of human presence as well as a rich mammal bone accumulation and other biological remains revealing the picture of the fauna, vegetation, climate and Palaeolithic culture of that time (Ivanova et al., 2012b, Ivanova et al., 2013). The 14C and tephra dating determines the time span of this accumulation from before 50,000 BP to at least ∼36,000 cal BP, which is in concordance with the faunal data. The taphonomic evidence
Acknowledgements
The excavations at Magura Cave were fulfilled in the frame of the Balkan Paleo Project with the financial support of the America for Bulgaria Foundation and the American Research Center in Sofia (grant numbers 10ICAB1 and 12ICAB2); the excavators express their gratitude to these institutions for sponsoring and administrating this project. LH would like to thank Pip Brewer (NHM, London), who kindly gave access to the cave bear fossil specimens from Bacton. EM and CO acknowledge the support of
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