ESR DATING TEETH FROM GOLEMA PEŠT: ABSOLUTE DATES FOR MACEDONIA'S ONLY MIDDLE PALEOLITHIC SITE

Found in a cave 31 m long and 18 m wide, 3.5 km from Zdunje, and 65 km SW of Skopje, Golema Pešt is the only Middle Paleolithic archaeological site known in Macedonia. The cave sits 480 m above mean sealevel, facing southeast over the Treska River valley, which has now been filled by a reservoir that rises to a few metres before the cave entrance. Excavations at the site began in 1974, but continue today. Three excavation pits have been opened, including one that reaches to > 6 m deep, that has exposed > 20 geological layers. In the upper sequence, several archaeological layers lie stratigraphically above a travertine layer that can be traced laterally at least 11 m back into the cave from its thickest exposure in the pit 5 m near the entrance. In the cave, 6300 Paleolithic artefacts and 4,900 animal fossils were excavated from the upper six units. The Middle-early Upper Pleistocene fauna include Cervus elaphus, Capreolus, Capra ibex, Sus scrofa, Crocuta sp., Ursus sp., Castor fiber, martens, micromammals, several birds, and turtles, that lived in mixed paleoenvironments that varied from times with predominantly forests to drier times with plains. In Layers 5 and 6, a Mousterian assemblage includes Levallois cores and flakes, discoid cores, denticulates, and notched tools, made on quartz, rhyolite, basalt, and jasper. In Layer 6, AMS ¹⁴C dates at ~ 47 ka and > 50 ka suggest that most of the deposit exceeds the ¹⁴C limit. Since ESR can date tooth enamel from ~ 5 ka to > 2 Ma, with ~ 2-5 % precision, six herbivore teeth from the upper sequence from Layers 3-5 have been dated by standard and isochron ESR. To measure the volumetrically averaged sedimentary dose rates, > 20 sediment samples from seven layers within 30 cm of the teeth dated were analyzed by NAA. Cosmic dose rates were calculated by ramped box averaging, based upon the geological data about the sedimentary cover. Accumulated doses were calculated using the additive dose method using 10-15 precisely characterized added doses.