Stratigraphy and geochronology of the Kuldara Early Paleolithic Site (Tajikistan)

The Kuldara site, situated near the Khovaling loess plateau in Southern Tajikistan, stands as the most ancient stratified site of the Early Paleolithic in Central Asia. Here, at the end of the 20th century, stone tools were discovered in pedocomplexes 11 and 12, with an estimated age of ~0.9 million years according to geological data. This discovery marked the archaeological materials from Kuldara as evidence of the earliest penetration of ancient people into the southeastern regions of Central Asia. However, despite the significant importance of the site in understanding the conditions and chronology of the initial settlement in the region, a chronostratigraphic study of the complete section of loess­paleosol series at the site had never been conducted before. Consequently, the regional correlation of this monument was critically challenging. We present the results of a comprehensive study of the stratigraphic sequence of the Kuldara section from modern soil to pedocomplex 11 on the cliff of the eastern bank of the same­named stream. We conducted soil description and detailed paleomagnetic research, measured magnetic susceptibility and its frequency dependence, and carried out archaeological work. Based on the obtained data, we performed, for the first time, a correlation with the oxygen isotope scale of the World Ocean, allowing us to estimate the age of the exposed pedocomplexes and identify significant erosion events in the upper part of the section. As a result of the archaeological work conducted, a collection of stone tools was obtained from pedocomplexes 4, 5, 6, and 10. These artifacts indicate the regular presence of ancient people at the site after the initial episode of settlement around ~0.9 million years ago, and the conducted chronostratigraphic correlation enables a more precise estimation of the timing of individual stages of this presence.

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