Recognaissance survey of the Paleolithic Tolbor-21 site in Northern Mongolia

This paper is devoted to results of the excavation of multilayer Paleolithic site Tolbor-21 in Northern Mongolia. Site is located in the right tributary of Selenga River, in Ikh-Tulberiin-Gol River valley. Site was found at 2010 and tested by test pits and test trench in 2011 and 2014. As a result of exploring works the presence of four cultural horizons with archaeological remains was previously revealed. The first cultural horizon is associated with Late Upper Paleolithic. The second cultural horizon is presented by flake industry of final stage of Early Upper Paleolithic. The third cultural horizon contains Initial Upper Paleolithic blade industry and has 14Cdetermination by 39,000 BP. The archeologically sterile layer separate the third cultural horizon from fourth (which is associated with most early stage of Upper Paleolithic or with Middle Paleolithic) and it was dated approximately 45,000 years ago by radiocarbon analyses. Thereby, the rich lithic assemblages of this site have the one of the earliest absolute chronological determination among Upper Paleolithic complexes of Northern Central Asia.