Mezin
Mezin Scene
Two skulls with tusks form the arched entrances, the tusks being joined by a hollow leg bone. Antlers were woven together to help form the roof. Note that the entrance was apparently screened with a mammoth hide door.
Photo: J. Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man'
Cabane No 1 de Mézine avec les zones d'activité de plein air. Photo IA NASU
Photo and text: Archeometriai Müely 2005/4
Les parures en coquillages au Paleolithique superieur recent dans les territoires de peuplement du bassin du dniepr
by Lioudmila Iakovleva
From:
http://www3.calle.com/info.cgi?lat=51.8167&long=33.0833&name=Mezin&cty=Ukraine&alt=403
Latitude 51.8167 Longitude 33.0833 Altitude (feet) 403
Lat (DMS) 51° 49' 0' N Long (DMS) 33° 4' 60' E Altitude (metres) 122
From:
http://history.cn.ua:8101/english/
The Chernigov Regional Historical Museum by V. Tarnovsky is the oldest and best known in Ukraine. It was founded in 1896.
The settlement of Mezin is one of the oldest in Ukraine and belongs to the Paleolithic. Excavation showed that it consisted of five household complexes.
The time of the settlement existence may account for 22-23 years. At least seven families totalling 50 people lived there.
They hunted for large animals and in most cases for mammoths. Collective hunting gave them food, skins for covering dwelling houses and clothes.
Bones of large animals were the best building materials at that time.
On display in the museum are bones of mammoth's shoulder, lower jaw, and tusk.
Flint tools are widely represented by various cutters, scapers, and prickers.
The Mezin settlement have become famous of their works of art. The inhabitants made ornaments from mammoth's bone, and liked decorative items made from cockleshell.
The settlement of Mezin is celebrated for its oldest musical instruments complex, which consists of an ornamented mammoth shoulder, antler hammer, noisy bracelet.
The inhabitants performed their dances under this music more than 20 000 years ago.
The original jam session. Assistants at the Ukrainian Museum of Archaeology, Kiev, are here seen in 1976 recreating the sounds of an Upper Paleolithic "orchestra" using painted mammoth bones found at the site of Mezin. The bones date from about 20 000 BC
The instruments consist of a mammoth shoulder blade as a drum with an antler hammer,
a mammoth hip bone said to resonate with different tones like a xylophone,
parts of a "castanet"
and a "rattler" made from mammoth jaws.
Photos: Secrets of the Ice Age by Evan Hadingham, 1980
This reconstruction is of the remains of a similar hut to those of Mezin, but found in Germany:
Gönnersdorf (Rhénanie-Palatinat), Magdalénien supérieur, vers 12 600. Cette reconstitution réaliste de l'habitation no 1 (Ø = 7 m) s'inspire librement d'une yaranga tchouktche; la carcasse en bois dont le toit s'appuie sur un mât central est recouverte de peaux de chevaux, l'entrée cloisonnée largement ouverte au sud-est laisse voir le dallage de schiste et le support d'une broche à un fémur de mammouth.
Gönnersdorf (the Rhineland-Palatinat), higher Magdalenien, around 12 600 BP. This realistic reconstruction of the dwelling No 1 (diameter = 7 m) is similar to a yaranga (the traditional circular dwelling tent) of the Tchouktche people of Siberia. The structure's roof is supported on a central pole and is covered with horse hides, the partitioned entry opened to the south-east lets us see the schist (flag stones) pavement and the femur of a mammoth.
From:
http://fulbright.kiev.ua/cohen/index.htm
The palynological spectra of Mezirich site (Middle Dnieper area), that is about the same latitude as a Rogalik-Peredelsk group, marks undoubtedly prevailed steppe periglacial landscape. The pollens of a birch, alder and pine are rather individual (Dolukhanov, Pashkevich, 1977; Kornietz and all., 1987, p. 109).
View of mammoth bone ruins excavated at Mezin in the Ukraine
Click on the photo for a larger view.
Photo: Secrets of the Ice Age by Evan Hadingham, 1980
Mezin excavation
Circular hut at Mezin. The fireplaces and vertically standing bones are clearly visible.
Photo: J. Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man'
Mezin excavation
Circular hut at Mezin. As an experiment tusks were placed in the upright skulls which formed the outer wall. This demonstrates how the combination could have formed a viable structural unit.
Photo: J. Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man'
Mezin - plan of the excavation
1, bones; 2, concentration of small objects; 3, hearths; 4, border of excavation;
5, limits of the site; 6, border of the core and periphery areas of the site
Photo: O.Soffer, 'The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain'
Plan du pourtour de la cabane n°1 de Mézine d'après le document I. G.
Chovkoplass. Relevé des ossements de mammouths ornés d'après L. Iakovleva.
Plan of the circumference of the hut n°1 of Mezin according to the document by I G Chovkoplass. Plan of the bones of decorated mammoths according to L Iakovleva.
Photo and French text: "les mammouths - Dossiers
Archéologie - n° 291 - Mars 2004"
Photograph L Iakovleva.
My thanks to Anya for access to this resource.
Mezin Cross Section
1, loess and present-day soil; 2, fossil soil; 3, stratified loam; 4, boulder clay; 5, redeposited Paleogene sand;
6, sand; 7, cultural remains; 8, chalk; 9, alluvium; 10, colluvium
Photo: O.Soffer, 'The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain'
Bracelet from Mezin
Photo: http://www.humanities-interactive.org/ancient/iceage/ex038_04d.html
Bracelet from Mezin - showing the total design
Photo: http://turing.mi.sanu.ac.yu/vismath/avital/a16.htm
Bracelet gravé en ivoire de mammouth de Mézine. Collection IA NASU.
Bracelet engraved out of mammoth ivory from Mezin. Collection IA NASU.
Photo and French text: "les mammouths - Dossiers
Archéologie - n° 291 - Mars 2004"
Photograph L Iakovleva.
My thanks to Anya for access to this resource.
Aiguille à chas gravée de chevrons en ivoire de mammouth de Mézine -
Collection MNIU.
Mammoth ivory needle with eye, engraved with chevrons, from Mezin. Collection MNIU.
Photo and French text: "les mammouths - Dossiers
Archéologie - n° 291 - Mars 2004"
Photograph L Iakovleva.
My thanks to Anya for access to this resource.
Mezin Art
mammoth ivory 'phallic figurines' and birds
Photo: O.Soffer, 'The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain'
Statuette féminine sculptée avec double triangle pubien et chevrons
gravés de Mezine - Collection MNIU - Photo L. Iakovleva.
Female statuette carved with double pubic triangle and engraved chevrons, from Mezin - Collection MNIU - Photograph L Iakovleva.
Photo and French text: "les mammouths - Dossiers
Archéologie - n° 291 - Mars 2004"
Photograph L Iakovleva.
My thanks to Anya for access to this resource.
Mezin Art
Bones painted with red ochre
Photo: O. Soffer, 'The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain'
Omoplate de mammouth peinte utilisée dans la construction d'une des
cabanes de Mézine. Photo L. Iakovleva.
Scapula of painted mammoth used in the construction of one of the huts of Mezin. This appears to be the same object as the scapula depicted in Soffer above, rotated through 180°. Photo L Iakovleva.
Photo and French text: "les mammouths - Dossiers
Archéologie - n° 291 - Mars 2004"
My thanks to Anya for access to this resource.
Wolf Camp, Mamutoi Summer Meeting
from the book The Mammoth Hunters by Jean Auel
Wolf Camp is located at Mezin, Ukraine, which, like many other sites on the central Russian plain, was discovered during excavation for a cellar. It was excavated at various times from 1908 to 1961.
Its position is at 51 deg 45 min N, 33 deg 05 min E.
(From Soffer, Olga, 'The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain',1985 ISBN 0-12-654270-8 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-12-654271-6 (pb) )
This position agrees with the directions given in The Mammoth Hunters:
....In the morning the Lion Camp continued upstream, staying on the plateau of the plains, but catching glimpses of the swift waterway below on their left, cloudy with glacial runoff and churning with silt. When they reached a fork, a place where two major rivers joined, they took the left branch. After fording two large tributaries, putting most of their possessions in a bowl boat they had brought along for that purpose, they descended to the floodplain and travelled through the woods and grassy meadows of the river valley.
This agrees with the map:
Soffer:
Cultural remains were located on the left-bank promontory of an old ravine that cut through the interfluve deposits. The ravine is located on the north (right) bank of the river in an area where the interfluve plateau first gently descends to the river and then abuts the river in steep 40-70 m cliffs.
This distribution of ravines and the river agrees with those given in The Mammoth Hunters:
....Talut kept watching the system of hollows and ravines on the high right bank of the river [note the convention that the right bank is the bank on the right hand side as you go down the river] comparing the actual landscape to the ivory scratched with symbols, whose meaning was still unclear to Ayla. Ahead, near a sharp bend, was the highest point of the opposite shoreline, rising some two hundred feet above the water. On their side, a broad grassy field and patches of woods extended inland for some miles.
Soffer: The site was open to the south and protected by the plateau to the north. (The site is considered to occupy 1200 square metres) Shovkoplyas also reports finding five storage pits with large bones up to 0.6 m below the level of the hearths outside Dwelling 1. The hearths were a part of the cultural layer, they overlie the storage pits, and are separated from them by a sterile layer of colluvial loess.
....'The best places to put lodges are on that side - those hollows give good protection from the wind - but the best hunting is on this side,' Barzec explained.
....On the other side, as Talut led them towards a wide ravine, perhaps half a mile across at the top, Ayla heard a strange sound, like a loud hum or a muted roar. They gradually climbed uphill. Sixty feet or so above the level of the river and one hundred and fifty yards back, they came to the bottom of the large ravine.
Soffer: The promontory on which the cultural layers were deposited is today 10-12 metres above the river, approximately 300 m up the ravine from its entrance into the Desna.
....Ayla looked ahead, and gasped. Protected by steep walls, a half-dozen separate round lodges, clustered in a row, were comfortably settled within the nearly mile-long hollow.
....'but wolf camp has a creek running through their hollow this year, and it turns this way'
....'How about over there, near the wall?' Barzec suggested. 'It's not too level, but we can even it out'
Soffer: Maximal slope of 15 deg to 20 deg for some parts of the living floor is reported...
....At the farthest edge of the encampment, slightly around a curve of the ravine that opened on to the river valley, they constructed an awninglike lean-to.
....It was somewhat hidden from the sight of the people camped in the hollow, but the view of the river and the beautiful wooded meadows across was expansive.
....Talut had been quite surprised when told of the change in location of the Summer Meeting. [the original site had been washed out by spring floods]
....protected by steep walls, a half dozen separate round lodges, clustered in a row, were comfortably settled within the nearly mile-long hollow.
Soffer: Shovkoplyas explains the absence of a second cultural layer on the level of the storage pits by a rapid downslope erosion that purportedly occurred when man first occupied the promontory - possibly during a spring thaw.
The map in Soffer's book shows five mammoth bone houses in a row.
Soffer states that bone tools including eyed needles were found at the site, and that portable ivory art included figures variously described as phallic figurines, birds, and abstract representations of the female form, exactly the same as Ranec carved, shown in the end papers of The Mammoth Hunters.
A useful book may be:
Pidoplichko, I. H. Upper Palaeolithic dwellings of mammoth bones in the Ukraine: Kiev-Kirillovskii, Gontsy, Dobranichevka, Mezin and Mezhirich. Oxford: J. and E. Hedges, 1998. 276 p. University Museum Library GN414.3.B64 P53 1998
This page last modified Tuesday 05 May 2009
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Gönnersdorf (Rhénanie-Palatinat), Magdalénien supérieur, vers 12 600. Cette reconstitution réaliste de l'habitation no 1 (Ø = 7 m) s'inspire librement d'une yaranga tchouktche; la carcasse en bois dont le toit s'appuie sur un mât central est recouverte de peaux de chevaux, l'entrée cloisonnée largement ouverte au sud-est laisse voir le dallage de schiste et le support d'une broche à un fémur de mammouth.
Plan du pourtour de la cabane n°1 de Mézine d'après le document I. G.
Chovkoplass. Relevé des ossements de mammouths ornés d'après L. Iakovleva.
Bracelet gravé en ivoire de mammouth de Mézine. Collection IA NASU.
Aiguille à chas gravée de chevrons en ivoire de mammouth de Mézine -
Collection MNIU.
Statuette féminine sculptée avec double triangle pubien et chevrons
gravés de Mezine - Collection MNIU - Photo L. Iakovleva.
