THREE TYPES OF INDUSTRY IN THE STONE AGE OF GOBUSTAN

In the east of the Republic of Azerbaijan, in Gobustan district, there are numerous Stone Age sites with preserved culture-bearing deposits. Interest in the richest rock art sites concentrated there overshadowed studying the stone inventory of the region’s earliest sites relegating them to the background. In this work, the author proposes a general systematization of the materials of the Gobustan Stone Age. The paper contains detailed typological lists of key sites; suggests the criteria for dividing the material into three cultural and chronological groups; and substantiates a new view on the chronology and local peculiarities of these groups that is different from previously held ones in many respects. For the sites of the Upper Palaeolithic of Gobustan, an estimated age is proposed corresponding to the period prior to maximum of the Würm glaciation (i.e., no later than approximately 25–20 thousand years ago). The lower date of the Mesolithic layers correlates roughly with the end of the Allerød and the Younger Dryas (approximately 14–12 thousand years ago). The emergence of the local Neolithic is attributed approximately to the early 6th millennium BC.