Middle Paleolithic of the Petrovaradin fortress in a regional context

Abstract

The 2003 and 2004 rescue excavations of the Petrovaradin Fortress site near Novi Sad (Serbia) yielded a large number of Middle Paleolithic artifacts. Мassive backed bifacially flaked sidescrapers, previously unknown from the southern part of the Pannonian Basin, were found in the lower layer of the site (Layer 2b), while the upper layer (2a) document an assemblage with a pronounced Charentian component (Mihailović, 2009). According to the OSL dating results, Layer 2b could be as old as 86.0 ± 9 ka, while the obtained dates for Layer 2a vary between 42.8 ± 4.2 ka and 39.8 ± 3.8 ka (Marković et al., 2020). The unexpectedly late dates for Layer 2a raise the question of the stratigraphic integrity of the artifact-bearing strata, but also of the duration of Charentian in the region. Special attention will be paid to these issues as well as the question of regional differentiation of Charentian industries in the southern part of the Pannonian Basin.