Annual Meeting of UISPP Commission 8 "Recent Updates on Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic": Abstract books

Over the past fifteen years, research has provided an entirely new perspective on the Gravettian and Epigravettian occupation of the central Balkans. This region appears to have been most intensively inhabited between 30 and 27.5 ka cal BP—somewhat later than much of Central Europe, but earlier than the Adriatic coast and its immediate hinterland. The spatial and temporal distribution of Epigravettian sites in the Balkans clearly suggests population movements toward the Adriatic zone, raising the possibility that the Paleo-Adriatic lowland and its periphery served as a center of population aggregation during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The lack of substantial evidence for settlement in the interior Balkans after 20 ka cal BP, and even during the Late Glacial, remains unresolved, though several explanations have been proposed. The few known sites located deep in the Adriatic hinterland that date to this period may reflect the gradual recolonization of the peninsula from the Adriatic zone, rather than the persistence of local populations that may have hypothetically survived there beyond the LGM.