Tadeusz Wisniewski

Klementowice. A Magdalenian site in eastern Poland

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My most important scientific achievement is the realisation of the project: Klementowice - settlement in the eastern peripheries of Magdalenian culture circle. For 2013-2014, I was granted a subsidy by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland in order to compile the data obtained during the archaeological excavations at Klementowice and to publish a monograph of the site.

The final outcome of the project is the publication (issued in English and Polish) that includes the results of the implemented research methods as well as study room and laboratory analyses:

Tadeusz Wiśniewski (Ed.), 2015, Klementowice. A Magdalenian site in eastern Poland. Published by the Institute of Archaeology Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin.

The full version of the publication is available free of charge on the website:

• ®english version

  https://phavi.umcs.pl/at/attachments/2024/1013/211705-tw-klementowice-en.pdf

• ®polish version

  https://phavi.umcs.pl/at/attachments/2024/1013/205916-tw-klementowice-pl.pdf

  There is also science popular version of the monography:

• Tadeusz Wiśniewski, Barbara Niezabitowska- Wiśniewska (Eds.), 2013, Klementowice - obozowisko ze schyłku epoki lodowej we wschodniej Polsce /Klementowice - A late Ice Age settlement in Eastern Poland/, Lublin https://phavi.umcs.pl/at/attachments/2024/1013/212518-klementowice-obozowisko-ze-schylku-epo.pdf

  What was the course of research?

  The site in Klementowice was discovered and researched in the early 1980s. The artefact inventory discovered at that time was classified as the Late Magdalenian Culture. In 2007-2011 I resumed the research at the site. Its primary objective was to determine the degree of site degradation due to progressive soil erosion.

  As a result of the interdisciplinary research the reconstruction of the paleorelief within the site and in the nearest vicinity was carried out. The research enabled to determine with high accuracy in which places the soil profiles were reduced or overbuilt (destruction and burying of the site). The results of the geological and soil research were confirmed during the archaeological excavations. What is more, the dating of the sediments (OSL) in which the artefacts were deposited as well as the radiocarbon date from the organic material – 15.100 cal BP were successfully achieved. At that time, it was the first radiometric datings of the Palaeolithic settlement for the entire Lublin Upland. They served to verify the previous findings concerning the chronology of the site, based only and exclusively on the typology of the tools. The new data have allowed to move its chronology from the Bølling phase to the end part of the Oldest Dryas (GS-2a). The cold tundra climate which prevailed at that time, in correlation with the data acquired (OSL), was confirmed by the results of the micromorphological analysis of the sediments. Moreover, the first Pleistocene faunal remains, i.e. two horse (Equus ferus) specimens were discovered on the site in Klementowice. The bones were found in the fill of ice-cast wedge. On some of the bones cut marks have been identified, which excludes the animals’ natural death. Based on the analysis of the cement increment it has been determined that the horses must have been hunted during early autumn. Altogether 50,000 flint and stone artefacts, including 2,500 tools, have been discovered at the site in Klementowice.

  The interdisciplinary nature of the research allowed for the acquisition of the information about the interaction between the settlement on the site and the natural environment which constituted its economic background.

  The site is currently the most north-east Magdalenian settlement in Central Europe. Dating it back to the Oldest Dryas makes it the earliest documented trace of human settlement following the Last Glacial Maximum in eastern Poland.

  Reviews of the monograph:

• ®Lawrence Guy Straus, 2017: Klementowice: A Magdalenian Site in Eastern Poland. Tadeusz Wiśniewski, ed. Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, 2015, 376 pp., plus a DVD. No price, cloth. ISBN 978-83-61144-86-1. Journal of Anthropological Research, Volume 73, Number 2, Summer 2017, Chicago, 278-279.
• ®Marta Połtowicz-Bobak, 2017: Tadeusz Wiśniewski (ed.) Klementowice. A Magdalenian site in eastern Poland, Institute of Archaeology Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Lublin, 2015, 346 pp. Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia, Volume 12, Rzeszów, 331-340.
• ®Romuald Schild, 2017: Klementowice. A Magdalenian site in eastern Poland, Tadeusz Wiśniewski (Ed.), Institute of Archaeology Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin 2015, 376 pages. 151 black & white figures, 16 colour figures, 65 black & white plates, 97 tables, and 1 DVD Disc, Hardback, Available online: http://www.klementowice.eu/index.php/en/, ISBN 978 83 61144 86 1. Quartär 64, Rahden/Westf., 285-287.

Klementowice website (in polish):

https://www.umcs.pl/pl/klementowice.htm