The Neanderthal site Dry Mechetka in Volgograd, research in autumn 2021

One of the most famous and well-studied sites of the ancient people of the Stone Age of the Middle Paleolithic is located in the picturesque ravine of the small river Dry Mechetka in the north of Volgograd. The first stone tools on the outskirts of Stalingrad were discovered by geologist Mikhail Grishchenko in 1951, when the area was surveyed before the construction of the Volga hydroelectric power station. A year later, the expedition of Sergei Zamyatnin began work here. For two years - 1952 and 1954 - archaeologists explored part of the parking area with an area of ​​650 square meters. The estimated area of ​​the settlement is up to one sixth of a hectare. The cultural layer with a thickness of about 40 cm is overlain by a many-meter layer of marine sediments of the transgression (water level rise) of the Caspian during the Young-Sheksna interglacial about 50 thousand years ago. The researchers collected the bones of animals of that period (bison, horse, saiga, mammoth), about 8 thousand stone products. Among them - 365 stone tools made of flint, quartzite, sandstone. These are chopped, knife-shaped plates, pointed. In addition, five large and several small ash spots, traces of hearths, were found on the site. Accumulations of animal bones and stone tools gravitate towards them. This allows us to assume the presence of dwellings near the hearths, most likely in the form of conical huts (such as chums). Paleobotanical data obtained after the completion of the excavations indicated a temperate climate and steppe vegetation with a predominance of sagebrush, forbs and grasses during the time of the Neanderthals. Pine, spruce and birch grew from the trees in this place. The excavation material is stored in the funds and presented in the exposition of the Volgograd Regional Museum of Local Lore. By Decree of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR of December 4, 1974 No. 624, the parking lot was taken under state protection. Many years later, in 2018, excavations at the location of the Paleolithic site of Stone Age people in the bed of the Sukhaya Mechetka River were resumed by employees of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In the current 2021, these excavations were continued. A group of 11 scientists from Volgograd, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk is working on studying an ancient site near the right bank of the Dry Mechetka gully. A team of scientists is exploring the monument comprehensively. The group includes employees of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow State University, the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Volgograd Scientific and Production Center for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, the Historical, Ethnographic and Architectural Museum-Reserve “Old Sarepta“. Students of the Volgograd State Socio-Pedagogical University provide great help in the work. In the course of research, scientists plan to determine the exact time when Neanderthals lived in these places and find out what the climate was like at that time in their place of residence. It is also noteworthy that the studied cultural layer is located at a depth of 23 meters, which makes the Volgograd site of an ancient man one of the deepest in the world. During excavations in the 50s of the last century, not everything was properly documented. So modern scientists have enough cases. There are already new discoveries. Although only a square meter was excavated, a fragment of the pelvic bone of a bison was found on it. And one of the employees found a scraper in the dump, lost by Soviet archaeologists. According to experts, this is the only site in Europe that has been excavated over a large area at the same time. Thanks to this, it is possible to obtain additional information about the life of Neanderthals. Archaeologists took advantage of the unique opportunity to obtain soil samples to send them for laboratory research to the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences and other scientific institutions in the country and abroad to more accurately determine the micromorphological soil structure of this site. The results obtained in the Volgograd region, together with research data from other regions of the East European Plain, are used to study the features of Neanderthal adaptation to constantly changing climatic conditions. The Middle Paleolithic site “Sukhaya Mechetka” is one of the unique archaeological sites located on the territory of the Volgograd region. Its study is extremely necessary for understanding the completeness of the picture of human settlement in the region, the ancient climate, the nature of vegetation and landscape, the animal world, as well as the specifics of living and working activities of ancient people.