Areni-1 Cave

The Armenian Highlands is a key region for the study of the earliest hominin dispersals outside of Africa. Paleoanthropological evidence from the site of Dmanisi shows that the area was first occupied ~1.8 Ma. However, Dmanisi is but a single site, and therefore, little is known about the timing, duration and character of hominin occupation of the surrounding region. Ongoing research at several new Lower Paleolithic sites in cave and open-air contexts in varied eco-geological areas in Armenia provides crucial data on the behavioral adaptations of the region’s earliest hominin occupants. Areni-1 and -2 Caves in the karstic Arpa River valley are currently the only known cave sites in the area that preserve core and flake artifact assemblages associated with fossilized faunal remains. Haghtanak-3, ~48 km east of Dmanisi, is an open-air site with a loess-paleosol sequence overlying basalt. Core and flake artifact assemblages have been recovered from the base of the sequence, and the underlying basalt has been dated to ~2 Ma, making the artifacts relatively contemporaneous with the finds from Dmanisi. The site complex at Aghavnatun has yielded core and flake artifacts manufactured from local dacite. Artifacts have been observed within a sedimentary sequence beneath an ignimbrite deposit dated to ~650 ka. All these sites are currently undergoing excavation, geochronological, paleoenvironmental, and artifact analyses. Forthcoming results of this research will add substantially to our knowledge of how the region’s earliest occupants organized land use, technology, and subsistence in contiguous, yet eco-geographically distinct areas. Future comparison among disparate regions with early hominin occupation, including the Nihewan Basin in China, and Atapuerca and the Guadix Basin in Spain, can enable developing hypotheses on the mode and timing of the earliest hominin dispersals in Eurasia.