A survey of Paleolithic sites in the Western Morava Valley

Abstract

First evidence of habitation from Lower and Middle Palaeolithic in the Zapadna (Western) Morava valley were discovered few years ago. Sites located at the highest river terraces near Čačak (Kosovska Kosa, Viljuša, Vojnovića Brdo) yielded large quantity of artifacts of Lower Palaeolithic type including choppers, points of Quinson type and denticulated and notched tools on asymmetrical lakes. Similar situation has been encountered at Samaila-Vlaška Glava near Kraljevo, where Kombewa, Levallois and „proto-Levallois“ cores were discovered together with choppers as well as various types of sidescrapers and denticulated and notched tools. It has been established in the course of more recent site surveying that Palaeolithic inds also appear on the slopes of the Goč Mountain in the vicinity of Vrnjačka Banja. Artifacts have been encountered in the vicinity of secondary deposits of chert, opal and chalcedony in the area of villages Rudjinci and Štulac. Two partially worked bifaces were discovered at the site Rudno Brdo near the village Štulac, while tools made on large lakes (cleaver-like bifaces, massive points , notched tools) and on lakes some of which have the Levallois morphology were found on the banks of the Crnobarac creek. Middle Palaeolithic artifacts have been discovered also at lower terraces in the vicinity of Vrnjačka Banja (Ruđnci) and Kruševac (Globoder). Despite the fact that it concerns the surface scatters, whose integrity has yet to be conirmed, spatial distribution and technological variability of assemblages suggest an assumption that Western Morava valley was densely populated in the earliest phases of the Palaeolithic.