Subsistence Strategies of Upper Palaeolithic Human Groups in the Dniester Area (Ukraine)

The archaeological research conducted in the last decades allowed to highlight important data about the human occupations and paleoenvironmental conditions during the Upper Paleolithic in the East Carpathian area. More recently new sites were discovered and excavated (such as Doroshivtsi III and Korman IX), and new analyses were conducted on collections to better understand the Gravettian and Epigravettian occupations and subsistence practices in this area. We focus on the Carpathian and part of Middle-Podolsk regions of the Dniester basin, bordered by the outer Eastern Carpathians, in Ukraine. We present here an updated synthesis including the last discoveries and studies on known sites, considering chronological and paleoenvironmental data as well as behavioural data from lithic and, particularly from faunal remains. Our objective is to better understand the evolution of subsistence strategies as well as the modalities of territory occupation during the Upper Palaeolithic by the nomadic societies in the western segment of the East European Plain.