Dating Middle Palaeolithic red beds in southern Greece

Abstract

Late Quaternary red beds with associated Mousterian tools are widely distributed in Greece but have not been previously dated by direct methods. Here we extend the findings of a geological and archaeological study of the interaction between human settlement and landscape in the southern Argolid (Fig. 1) during the late Quaternary^1,3. Uranium-series dates were obtained from groundwater carbonate crusts, formed on Mousterian tools found in the southern Argolid, and from pedogenic carbonates found in the red beds that contain them. These dates indicate an age of ∼50,000 yr BP for the Mousterian tools and identify three episodes of red bed formation, beginning in the mid-Pleistocene and ending before the last glacial maximum. The radiometric dates are the first for the Mousterian in southern Greece and the first for alluvial red beds in the Mediterranean region.