The Black Sea Area

This chapter regards the Early Holocene archaeology of the Black Sea region and its adjacent areas, from the Bosphorus, in the west, to the Caucasus, in the east. From an archaeological and environmental point of view, the territory is very diverse. Some of the areas are reasonably well known, such as the steppe zone of Ukraine and the Crimean mountains, while the data currently available from others, among which are Anatolia and the westernmost Black Sea region, are very poor. This is due to di erent reasons, including the quality and intensity of the research, the characteristics of the landscape, and the political events that took place during the last decades. From a chrono cultural point of view, the most interesting region is the Crimean Peninsula, where important caves and rock shelters which were settled during the whole Early Holocene have been discovered and radiocarbon dated. These sites yielded long sequences with knapped stone artefacts of microlithic dimension among which are di erent types of geometric tools which are represented by variable percentages of lunates, triangles, and trapezoidal arrowheads