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Puzzling Radiocarbon Dates for the Upper Paleolithic Site of Sungir (Central Russian Plain)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Yaroslav V Kuzmin ,
Johannes van der Plicht  and
Leopold D Sulerzhitsky
Yaroslav V Kuzmin*
Affiliation:
Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia
Johannes van der Plicht
Affiliation:
Center for Isotope Research, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands; and Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands
Leopold D Sulerzhitsky
Affiliation:
Geological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 199034, Russia (deceased)
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: kuzmin@fulbrightmail.org.
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Abstract

A summary is presented of more than a decade-long study of direct radiocarbon dating for one of the most important human burials in Eurasia, the Sungir site in eastern Europe. Eighteen 14C dates were produced before early 2014 on three skeletons (Sungir 1–3), and there is still no consistency in the results. In the absence of other independent methods to establish the antiquity of Sungir, a careful analysis is performed of the site's stratigraphy, paleoenvironment, and 14C dates run on animal bones from the same layer as the burials. Although the conclusions of this work cannot be guaranteed to be absolutely correct, we suggest that at the present stage of research the age range of ∼26,000–27,210 BP is the most probable time for the creation of the elaborate human burials at the Sungir site.

Type
Chronology
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , 2014 , pp. 451 - 459
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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