Poland sampling

Marine went to the site of Biśnik Cave in the central part of the Kraków-Częstochowa valley, to collect sediment samples for PalaeoChron's OSL dating programme.

The cave system consists of several chambers and corridors in the rock containing 35 geological layers of sediments accumulated in front of the cave entrance and inside the chambers. Research on the site has been conducted since 1992 by an interdisciplinary team led by Prof K. Cyrek from the Institute of Archaeology UMK. The importance of the site stems from the fact that it has the longest sequence of cave sediments in Poland, seventeen cultural levels including remnants of the oldest Palaeolithic in this part of Europe and the oldest dwelling structures ever discovered in Poland.

The Biśnik Cave deposit is extremely significant for the reconstruction of paleogeography of Central Europe in the Middle and Upper Pleistocene as well as its human occupation history. It gives a rare opportunity to understand the cultural changes of pre- and Neanderthal inhabitants at the site in relation with the natural environment and climate changes over the period of 300 000 years.

Dating the site has been attempted several times in the past and allows an attribution of the human occupations globally from MIS 8 to MIS 3. However the discrepancy between the different methods does not allow a more precise chronological attribution of the human occupations at the site so far.

With the help of Maciej and Magdalena Krajcarz and their team, we took nice sequences of sediment samples in the cave entrance and inside one of the chamber.

On the 2nd day, we went to visit another site, Perspektywiczna cave (left), currently under excavation and very promising…more on that soon.