ESR DATING UNGULATE TOOTH ENAMEL FOUND IN THE MOUSTERIAN LAYERS AT PEšTURINA, SERBIA

Sitting on a major mammalian migration route from the Levant to Italy, Pešturina overlooks a tributary to the Nišava River southwest of Niš, in southern Serbia. In all three layers, faunae suggest a mixed environment with temperate forest, rocky cliffs, and steppe within walking distance from the cave, but the predominance of horse in Layers 4a and 4b suggests a warmer, drier climate during their deposition, than in later phrases. Although hyenas likely contributed some bone to the site, especially in Layer 3, the fragmentation patterns and butchering marks plus the many lithic tools suggest that some faunal remains were human kills. A depositional hiatus occurred between Layers 4 and 3.

From 11 ungulate teeth from the Mousterian layers, 39 enamel subsamples for associated ungulate teeth were independently dated with standard ESR. To assess the sedimentary dose rates, bulk sediment samples and individual mineralogically distinct components were analyzed by NAA, then averaged using a four-component dose averaging model. Volumetrically averaged sedimentary dose rates and time-averaged cosmic dose rates were calculated. With U in the enamel < 0.1 ppm, and dentinal U averaging 1.0-3.5 ppm, the ages do not depend on the U uptake model assumed for the age calculation. Although rodents apparently had reworked one tooth into Layer 4, most teeth appear to be stratigraphic succession and likely date the layers in which they occurred. One reworked tooth's date hint that a deposit correlated with the MIS 5a/4 boundary may have since been eroded from the site. Housing a Charentian Mousterian, Layers 4a and 4b both date to 95 ± 5 ka in MIS 5c. Since Layer 3, which contains a Denticulate Mousterian assemblage, dates to 38 ± 2 ka in MIS 3, and probably correlates with Dansgaard-Oeschger Event 8 or Les Cottés Interstadial, it may represent a local refugium for the Mousterian within the Balkans.