Article "Archaeological evidence for two separate dispersals of Neanderthals into southern Siberia" has published in a prestigious journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA). You can find the paper here: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/6/2879. The paper presents multi-proxy study of the Middle Paleolithic assemblage from Chagyrskaya Cave (Altai), dated to MIS 4/3. It combines traditional archaeology of lithics with modern statistic approach, chronometric dating, and sedimentological study of artifact-bearing sediments, to conclude on the continental scale links between Altai and Eastern European Neanderthals through their knapping technology.

Due to global COVID-19 pandemic and the recommendations of the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences, we had to hold up the 2020 summer fieldworks. Our planned trips to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Russian Altai must wait until the next (hopefully) year.

Two papers related to the project were presented at SEQS 2020 online conference. First was a paper focused on geology of Obishir-1 site, presented by PhD student Greta Brancaleoni; and second focused on small mammals from Obishir-5, presented by our collaborator, Dr. Natalia Serdyuk.

A conference abstract by Greta and colleagues about the geoarchaeological methodology accepted for the Obishirian sites has published in the proceedings of the International Geological–Archaeological Conference in Krasnoyarsk.

The paper about final Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene paleoenvironment in Fergana Valley has published online in Quaternary International! You can find it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618220307564. In the paper we present stratum-by-stratum the fossil mollusk taphocoenosis from Obishir-V rock shelter, counting over 1400 shells. Then we exploit the ecological requirements of recent relatives of these ancient snails to use it as a paleoenvironment proxy. The results reveal more-or-less constant climatic conditions during the studied time interval, and this leads to conclusions about non-environmental, but rather cultural, reasons for the development of Obishirian archaeological unit in the region.

The paper about the earliest Neolithic dispersal of domestic stock into Central Asia from the Near East has just published! The work has been coordinated by our colleague Dr. William Taylor, who gathered a group of archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, geneticians and geologists. In the paper we show the evidence for the much much earlier than previously tought neolithization of the montane region of Central Asia. The research has been conducted on the material from Obishir-V rock shelter in Kyrgyzstan.

While the preservation of ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in sediments has been widely recognized before, this new paper led by Benjamin Vernot for the first time explores the preservation of nuclear DNA (nDNA) in cave sediments, among others in Chagyrskaya Cave in Altai. Results have been just published in Science - one of the most prestigous scientific journals in the world. This project's contribution to the paper was an establishing of stratigraphy of sampled deposits.

A press article by Agnieszka Kliks-Pudlik about Maciej's work in caves in Central Asia (PAP - Polish Press Agency, in Polish):

https://naukawpolsce.pap.pl/aktualnosci/news,88952,w-poszukiwaniu-geologicznego-kontekstu-znalezisk-archeologicznych-w-azji

A paper by Greta and colleagues has been published online in Geoarchaeology (doi: 10.1002/gea.21892). We present here the multi-proxy approach (micromorphology, OLS dating, fossil mollusks, spatial distribution of the archaeological material) to reconstruct the site formation history at Obishir-I, the site of Obishirian, a transitional cultural unit between the local Epipaleolithic and the incoming Neolithic.

A paper by Laurits Skov et al., with input from our team, has just published in Nature (doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05283-y). In the paper, we present the genetic boundings between the Neanderthals from Chagyrskaya Cave, reveling them to be a family! Also the genetic diversity of the Altai Neanderthal population is presented with estimations of the population size - which was extremely low! Thanks to our tram's  geoarchaeological studies, we knew that bones from different layers come in fact from a single original assemblage, secondary dispersed through stratigraphy by post-depositional geological processes. This gave a rationale for including bones from variable stratigraphic context into one paleogenetic study.

A paper in Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports (10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.104118) by Greta and colleagues has just published online. The paper is focused on the closer look at what is going on at the very boundary between the groundmass and coarser gravel or pebble clasts. Of particular interest are typical sediments of the Ferghana Valley margins that host archaeological sites, namely diamictons of bimodal grain size distribution (loess silt + bedrock derived gravel and pebble) situated at slopes.