The Magdalenian site Kleszczowa 9, Pilica commune, Silesian voivodship (Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, Poland). Multi-aspectual analysis of the flint inventory and the importance of the site

The site no. 9 in Kleszczowa is located within the region of the so-called Barańskie Mountains, within a distance of ca. 7 km from the locality named Pilica, Silesian voiv. In the course of the field survey and trial excavations conducted in the area of the site since 2012 relics of the Late Palaeolithic settlement were discovered. Based on technological and typological traits flint inventory obtained from the site was classified as typical of the Magdalenian cultural tradition. Distinctive groups of artefacts were single-platform cores for blades with changed orientation, at various stages of exploitation and blade blanks with diagnostic en éperon butts. Amongst tools there were recorded mainly burins, endscrapers, perforators and truncated blades. Raw materials used for production of artefacts were, in great majority, high quality Jurassic flints, the outcrops of which occurred within direct surroundings of the site. Flint assemblage from the site Kleszczowa 9 was subjected to multi-aspect technological and functional analysis. In this paper the authors would like to stress the results of use-wear analysis, in particular, which revealed that nearly half of the artefacts investigated in this respect bore traces of utilisation for processing of wood, meat and hide. On few of them there were detected traces indicating processing of silica plants and elaboration of soaked bone. Moreover, many forms bore traces of hafting and organic substance, being most likely relics of some sort of a binder. Apart from these traces the artefacts under scrutiny were characterised by an extremely high degree of post-depositional destruction, resulting from deep ploughing employed within the area of the site. The results of analysis performed for flint assemblage from the site Kleszczowa 9 correspond well with the current state-of-the-art referring to utilisation of tools by the Magdalenian societies, and they undoubtedly extend our knowledge upon behaviour of humans at the decline of the Pleistocene in the region of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland.