Early Upper Paleolithic adornments from the south chamber of Denisova cave: new evidence

This article discusses the collection ofpersonal adornments from layer 11 in the Southern Chamber of Denisova Cave, which was obtained during field work in 2023, as well as unpublished materials from excavations of2001 and 2018-2021. The collection of 17 items included perforated pendants made of teeth of mammals, freshwater mollusk shells, and serpentinite; simple and ornamented tubular beads made of tubular bones, diadems or headbands made of mammoth ivory and bone, and flat round beads made of ostrich egg shells. As a result of research, methods of adornment manufacturing were reconstructed and main ways of using them were established. The production ofpendants made of teeth included several stages: selection of blanks, processing by planing or scraping, and formation of holes by biconical drilling or punching. The creation of tubular beads involved the following steps: selection of a bone blank, its processing by planing and truncation of epiphyses, application of linear ornamentation, marking and dividing the perform into short tubes by sawing and cutting, fragmentation, removal of spongy substance and evening up the edges. Pendants and tubular beads were widely used for decorating clothing and as personal adornments. Manufacturing objects of rare imported materials - shells and serpentine - required a different sequence: selection of raw materials, splitting them into small fragments, biconical drilling, and abrasive surface treatment. When creating headbands, long pieces of softened tusk were cut out, planed, drilled and polished, soaked in water, bent to obtain a rounded shape, and subjected to final polishing. The discovery of the first bone diadem in Denisova Cave has expanded our understanding of technical skills possessed by the Upper Paleolithic people. The use of bone as more affordable raw material could have been associated with shortage of tusks which, judging by the faunal data, were a relatively rare material.