AN ANDESITE LEVALLOIS POINT FROM THE JAVAKHETI HIGHLAND (NORTH-WESTERN LESSER CAUCASUS, GEORGIA)

This paper describes and discusses an andesite Middle Palaeolithic Levallois point discovered on the surface of Javakheti Highland in the Lesser Caucasus of Georgia at 2130 m of altitude during the surveys carried out in the summer of 2017. Though andesite Acheulian hand-axes were already recovered along the slopes of Mt. Chikiani during the Soviet period, the new find shows that this raw material was employed also for knapping Levallois tools, despite the rich obsidian sources available from the volcano. The discovery would suggest that the tool is older than the beginning of exploitation of the obsidian sources that, according to the available data, started to be utilised around the end of the Middle Palaeolithic.