The Lower Paleolithic locality of Kadosh in the Black Sea coast of the Northwestern Caucasus: new data

The northwestern Caucasus Lower Paleolithic is mainly known for its localities containing surface archaeological materials that provide minimum information on their geochronological context and cultural attribution. Stratified camps dating to the Lower Paleolithic are very rare. The paper provides new data on the Lower Paleolithic locality of Kadosh located in the Black Sea coast of the northwestern Caucasus, summarizes data on this locality, substantiates its dating and interprets the archaeological material in a new light. The analyzed occurrence conditions of the lithic items at the Lower Paleolithic locality of Kadosh suggest that they are linked to littoral (beach) sediments of the Old Euxinian terrace and can be dated to the period when accumulation of these sediments ended up and a subaerial layer began to build up over these sediments in the form of deluvial and proluvial loams. In other words, the Kadosh locality, most likely, is contemporary with the Old Euxinian (the end) or the Paleouzunlarian (the beginning) stages of the Old Euxinian transgression of the Black Sea correlated with MIS 12 (the Oka Glaciation) and MIS 11 (the Likhvin Interglacial of the Russian Plain), respectively, and has the age within the range of ~ 470,000400,000 years (after Railsback et al., 2015). The lithic industry of the locality is referred to the Acheulean of the Levalloisian facies. The study of the locality clearly indicates that the northwestern Caucasus as well as the regions of the Caucasus further to the south were part of the zone of the typical Acheulean distribution.