ESR Dating of the Last Interglacial Mousterian at Karaı̈n Cave, Southern Turkey

We have obtained ESR ages on 18 teeth from archaeological levels AH16-AH27 exposed at the east profile in compartment E at Karaı̈n Cave. This sequence exhibits a transition in lithic assemblage from a Classic Charentian to a Karaı̈n (Zagros-type) Mousterian between levels AH27 and AH25, and two calcite-cemented soils at levels AH22 and AH16 which have been interpreted as climatic warm phases. Since we found no systematic increase in tooth ages with depth, we assigned this sequence a mean early uptake (EU) age of 108 ± 23 ka and mean linear uptake (LU) age of 121 ± 27 ka, on the basis of 37 subsamples from 16 teeth. In this site, the precision of individual tooth ages suffered little from the problems associated with uranium uptake. However, this advantage was offset due to uncertainties arising from the rather inhomogeneous nature of the enclosing strata which contained various sizes of limestone blocks with intervening sediment. This led to difficulties in ascribing a precise annual gamma radiation dose to individual teeth in such a "lumpy" gamma radiation field. Considerable scattering of the individual tooth ages occurred mainly because the annual gamma dose comprised greater than 50% of the total annual dose to the individual teeth. On the basis of the ESR dating results, we infer that deposition of the two different lithic assemblages and both the penultimate and the final climatic warm phases at Karaı̈n probably occurred during oxygen isotope stage 5. We also conclude that these lithic assemblages are significantly different than contemporaneous Levantine Mousterian industries which occur about 700 km to the southeast.