Study of early Paleolithic assemblages of Mis 14-15 in the Obi-Mazar river valley (Tajikistan) in 2022

The article presents the results of 2022 excavations by the joint Russian-Tajik geoarchaeological expedition of the Early Paleolithic in Southern Tajikistan. At the Lakhuti IV site, a new area of concentration of archaeological materials was discovered in pedocomplex 6. Excavated area of 10.5 sq. m opened 7 m thick loess-paleosol sequence. In the course of the work, both PC-6 deposits and also the layer of overlapping loess (up to PC-5) were studied. In the studied section, 17 lithological layers were identified, grouped into three main units: paleosol PC-6b (layers 17-12), paleosol PC-6a (layers 10-7), and thick loess of L6 including several loess level and poorly developed paleosols (layers 6-1). The total archaeological collection includes 181 lithic artifacts and 48 non-identified bone fragments. The main archaeological material was obtained from layers 6 and 5; individual items were also found at different levels of PC-6a and PC-6b. Archaeological material in the loess (157 pieces) was also located at several levels. The conditions for occurrence as well as technical and typological characteristics of the stone assemblage allows considering the entire collection from the loess unit as a complex within single industry using several primary knapping techniques: radial, unifrontal, slice, and parallel, in their most primitive forms and with the minimum core processing. The toolkit includes a point, a notched tool, and a retouchedflake. The studied loess unit, according to the available chronostratigraphic chart of the region, formed ~560-520 ka, and corresponds to MIS 14, while the collection from PC-6 corresponds to MIS 15. The most significant result of the 2022 study in this area is the first reliable evidence of the presence of massive archaeological material in loess deposits.