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January 2021 - present
March 2011 - January 2021
January 2010 - present
Publications
Publications (79)
The first settlement of Europe by modern humans is thought to have occurred between 50,000 and 40,000 calendar years ago (cal B.P.). In Europe, modern human remains of this time period are scarce and often are not associated with archaeology or originate from old excavations with no contextual information. Hence, the behavior of the first modern hu...
Nigst, P.R. 2014, First Modern Human Occupation of Europe: The Middle Danube Region as a Case Study, in K Boyle, RJ Rabett & CO Hunt (eds), Living in the Landscape: Essays in Honour of Graeme Barker, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, pp. 35-47
The origin of contemporary Europeans remains contentious. We obtained a genome sequence from Kostenki 14 in European Russia
dating from 38,700 to 36,200 years ago, one of the oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans from Europe. We find that
Kostenki 14 shares a close ancestry with the 24,000-year-old Mal’ta boy from central Siberia, European M...
a b s t r a c t The role of humans in the formation of Gravettian mammoth bone accumulations of central and eastern Europe is a heavily debated topic. Grub-Kranawetberg, a multi-layered Gravettian open-air site in eastern Austria, yielded a bone accumulation in the vicinity of a campsite. Zooarchaeological, taphonomic, and spatial analyses of this...
This is the first part of a special issue on the impact of Upper Pleistocene climatic and environmental change on hominin occupations and landscape use. In this part there are six contributions:
• Davies, W., and Nigst, P.R.: An Introduction to Part 1 of the Special Issue
• Maier, A., Ludwig, P., Zimmermann, A., and Schmidt, I.: The sunny side of t...
The first Palaeolithic discoveries in Romania were made in the 19th century in Mitoc (Botoșani department). Five main stations were excavated, yielding Middle and Upper Palaeolithic industries (including Aurignacian, Gravettian and Epipalaeolithic). Some have yielded mixed industries ; others were better preserved and understood, like Malu Galben
Mitoc–Malu Galben (Romania) is one of the key-sites for the Upper Palaeolithic in Eastern Europe, with abundant Upper Palaeolithic archaeological layers embedded in a ∼14 meters long loess-palaeosol sequence. The excavations in 1978–1990 yielded rich remains of Aurignacian and Gravettian workshops. From 1992 to 1995, an international collaboration...
The article is devoted to the results of the study of Neporotovo 7 — a new multilayered Palaeolithic site in the Middle Dniester region, situated 20 km east of the site of Molodovo V. One Upper Palaeolithic (Gravettian?) and four Middle Palaeolithic horizons (AH 2, 3, 3а, 7) were identified in the loess sediments dated to the Upper and Middle Pleis...
Korman’ 9 is a newly discovered Upper Palaeolithic site in the Middle Dniester valley (Ukraine). Here we present chronostratigraphic, palaeoenvironmental, chronological, lithic and faunal data. Within a ∼4 m deep sequence we have identified four Archaeological Layers (AL 0 to III) and AL I can be attributed to the Epigravettian, AL II most probably...
This paper presents preliminary results of fieldwork conducted at the Upper Palaeolithic open-air site Mitoc-Malu Galben in northeastern Romania. The site has a ∼14m deep loess-paleosol sequence with a rather high climatic resolution. The chronostratigraphy is well established and embedded in this long sequence are abundant archaeological remains,...
The Neolithic transition in Europe was driven by the rapid dispersal of Near Eastern farmers who, over a period of 3,500 years, brought food production to the furthest corners of the continent. However, this wave of expansion was far from homogeneous, and climatic factors may have driven a marked slowdown observed at higher latitudes. Here, we test...
The well-dated stratigraphic sequence of Willendorf II is a reference site for the Upper Palaeolithic in general and the Gravettian in particular.
In 1993, a joint team from the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique (Brussels, Belgium) and the University of Vienna carried out excavations at this loess site in the Danube Valley known si...
R Script for generating Rose Diagrams to illustrate seasonality
Present-day hunter-gatherers (HGs) live in multilevel social groups essential to sustain a population structure characterized by limited levels of within-band relatedness and inbreeding. When these wider social networks evolved among HGs is unknown. Here, we investigate whether the contemporary HG strategy was already present in the Upper Paleolith...
Document S1. Supplemental Experimental Procedures, Figures S1–S4, and Tables S1 and S2
The Neolithic transition was a dynamic time in European prehistory of cultural, social, and technological
change. Although this period has been well explored in central Europe using ancient nuclear DNA [1, 2], its
genetic impact on northern and eastern parts of this continent has not been as extensively studied. To broaden our understanding of the...
Willendorf II provides the longest and best-studied MIS 3 sequence in the Middle Danube region, and represents one of the key reference sequences for this time period in Central Europe. The assemblage chosen for analysis derives from archaeological horizon (AH) 5, attributed to the period of the first Gravettian between 30 and 27 ka uncal. BP. Whil...
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Willendorf II provides the longest and best-studied MIS 3 sequence in the Middle Danube region, and represents one of the key reference sequences for this time period in Central Europe. The assemblage chosen for analysis derives from archaeological horizon (AH) 5, attributed to the period of the first Gravettian between 30 and 27 ka uncal. BP. Whil...
Introduction and DefinitionWillendorf II, a site originally excavated about a century ago, is one of the more important European Upper Paleolithic sites in part for the discovery of the famous Venus I figurine but also for the data it can provide on the earliest Aurignacian. Excavations at Willendorf II have yielded a long loess-paleosol succession...
The Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) of Europe is often equated with the appearance of symbolic behaviour in Europe and the dispersal of anatomically and behaviourally modern humans into and within Western Eurasia.
These historical processes are heavily debated in the palaeoanthropological and archaeological research communities. In order to contribu...
Four charcoal samples from loess key sites in Austria, Moravia, and western Ukraine were submitted to ABOx (acid-base oxidation) pretreatment to compare results with the classical ABA (acid-base-acid) method. For this purpose, char-coal samples already dated in Groningen laboratory were selected from 3 archaeological sites: Molodova V in western Uk...
Four charcoal samples from loess key sites in Austria, Moravia, and western Ukraine were submitted to ABOx (acid-base oxidation) pretreatment to compare results with the classical ABA (acid-base-acid) method. For this purpose, charcoal samples already dated in Groningen laboratory were selected from 3 archaeological sites: Molodova V in western Ukr...
Grub/Kranawetberg, a multilayered Gravettian site in Lower Austria, is one of many Gravettian open-air sites of Central Europe. These sites are well-known since a long time for their settlement structures, but also rich lithic inventories as well as organic tools, personal adornments, and art objects (e.g., Pavlov, Dolní Vestonice). While old excav...
This paper gives an overview of the Aurignacian/EUP sites in Eastern Austria and presents preliminary results of an analysis of never-before-published lithics from the well-known site of Willendorf II. Preliminary results of typological and technological analyses (raw material studies, attribute analysis, and refitting) are presented. In comparison...
Zusammenfassung: In diesem Beitrag werden erste Beobachtungen zur raumlichen Organisation der gravettienzeitlichen Fundstelle Grub/Kranawetberg vorgestellt. Der erste Teil der Arbeit widmet sich der Prasentation des GIS-basierten Analyseansatzes und der einzelnen Methoden. Zur Anwendung kommen neben Einzel- und Fundmengenkartierungen die Ring and S...
