Christine Chataigner

The Upper Palaeolithic site of Kalavan 1 (Armenia): an Epigravettian settlement in the Lesser Caucasus.

The open-air site of Kalavan 1 is located in the Aregunyats mountain chain (at 1640 m above sea level) on the northern bank of Lake Sevan. It is the first Upper Palaeolithic site excavated in Armenia. Led by an Armenian-French team, several excavations (2005-2009) have revealed a well preserved palaeosoil, dated to around 14,000 BP (years before present), containing fauna, lithic artefacts, as well as several hearths and activity areas that structure the settlement. The initial studies enable placement of the site in its environment and justify palaeoethnological analysis of the Epigravettian human groups of the Lesser Caucasus.

Dog molars as personal ornaments in a Kura-Araxes child burial (Kalavan-1, Armenia)

Abstract Two perforated dog molars were found directly associated with a Kura-Araxes child burial from the third millennium BC in Armenia. Both teeth show trimming of the root ends and boring of a biconical hole through the lingual root with a hand-held stone tool. Expedient manufacture, the anatomical location of the hole and use-wear suggest that the molars were suspended in order to display their crowns as part of a necklace that also included two stone beads. This is an unusual type of personal ornament and the first of its kind reported in the South Caucasus. Its use in a Kura-Araxes burial is interpreted as an active modification of the funerary symbolism during this period.

Kite Recognition by Means of Graph Matching

Kites are remnants of long stone walls that outline the shape of a child’s kite. But the kites are huge, their big size makes them often clearly visible on high-resolution satellite images. Identified at first in the Near East, their area of distribution is getting larger and larger. This wide distribution gives new dimensions in the interpretation of these structures. Consequently, a large scale recognition of kites will help archeologists to understand the functionality of these enigmatic constructions. In this paper, we investigate how the satellite imagery can be exploited in this purpose using a graph representation of the kites. We propose a similarity measure and a kite identification process that can highlights the preservation state of the kites. We also construct from real images a benchmark of kite graphs that can be used by other researchers.

Le paléolithique moyen de la haute vallée du Kasakh (Arménie): caractérisation technologique et peuplement de montagne

L’article livre le resultat d’une serie de prospections (2003-2007), doublees le cas echeant de sondages pour une zone d’Armenie jusqu’a present quasi-inedite quant aux modalites de peuplement pleistocene. La region correspond a la haute vallee du Kasakh avec des sites s’etageant entre 1855 et 2302 m d’altitude entre differents edifices volcaniques. Malgre l’altitude, elle est remarquable par la presence de facteurs propices aux occupations pleistocenes : abondance d’une excellente matiere premiere (obsidienne), structures d’accueil naturelles avec une geomorphologie favorable aux etablissements humains, paleolacs et omnipresence de l’eau. Le parametre biotique est helas absent, de meme que les donnees chronostratigraphiques, mais la densite de sites, leur originalite et la qualite des series recueillies signent une discrete presence de l’Acheuleen s. l., mais surtout une ou plusieurs phases du Paleolithique moyen. Le Paleolithique superieur est absent. Pour le Paleolithique moyen, les schemas de production sont largement domines par les methodes Levallois avec plusieurs modalites : unipolaire convergent – y compris a pointe –, laminaire, centripete, etc. L’outillage cadre assez bien avec le bilan connu pour le Paleolithique moyen du Sud Caucase et les rapprochements nous menent vers des schemas comparatifs contemporains de phases clementes de l’OIS 5, eventuellement de l’OIS 3.