The American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) jointly with
Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC) – Armenia invites you to a lecture

 “Middle Paleolithic Lithic Technology and Behavior
in the Hrazdan River Gorge, Armenia”

 to be delivered by

Beverly A. Schmidt

(ARISC Fellow, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA)

Date:              July 13, 2012
Time:             14:00 -16:00
Location:      CRRC-Armenia, 52 Abovyan Street, 3rd Floor, Room 305
Language:    English

General Overview: The current project presents a technological analysis of Lusakert Cave I, a Middle Paleolithic lithic assemblage from Armenia, an important geographic region for the understanding and testing of hypotheses relating to Late Pleistocene hominin behavior in the southern Caucasus, such as technology, behavior, site occupation and duration, mobility range, and raw material economy. The site is located in the Hrazdan Gorge, dated to 60–40kya BP (OIS3), a known time range of occupation overlap for Neanderthals and modern humans, with an assemblage consisting of >97% obsidian. It is imperative to investigate local MP lithic technologies and behaviors in Armenia and how these compare to published record elsewhere in the southern Caucasus and neighboring regions.

Short Bio: Beverly A. Schmidt is Doctoral Candidate at the University of Connecticut who has conducted Paleolithic archaeological research as a lithic analyst in southwest France, Morocco, and Egypt since 2005 and in Armenia since 2008. Her main interests are lithic technology, human origins, behavioral evolution and ecology, quantitative methods and computer applications in archaeological fieldwork.

Registration: If interested in the lecture, please, confirm your attendance via crrcnews@crrc.am or call at 58-13-30, 58-14-50 before July 12, at 17:00, mentioning your name and organizational affiliation. For more information, please see http://www.arisc.org and https://www.facebook.com/AmericanResearchInstituteoftheSouthCaucasus.

This talk is co-sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC), Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC) – Armenia, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the University of Connecticut, and the Institute for Archaeology and Ethnography RA.