Introduction
Kostenki is the name of a village on the Don River in the Russian Federation where more than twenty open-air Paleolithic sites are known. Several more sites are found at the village of Borshchevo, which is located about 5 km downstream from Kostenki. The sites are assigned to the Upper Paleolithic and yield skeletal remains of modern humans (Homo sapiens). Artifacts were found in association with the remains of extinct mammals at Kostenki in 1879 and were among the first discoveries of IceAge people in Eastern Europe. By the 1930s, the sites at Kostenki and Borshchevo had produced a rich record of middle and late Upper Paleolithic occupation, including large feature complexes with traces of suspected dwelling structures. The excavation and study of the occupation floors had a significant impact on theory and method in archaeology during the Soviet period. In the years following the Second World War, substantial evidence of early Upper Paleolithic occupation was discovered...
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Hoffecker, J.F., Anikovich, M.V. (2014). Kostenki: Geography and Culture. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1876
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