Daily life at Kostenki on the Don River during the Upper Palaeolithic

Animal remains, worked stone and plant residues reveal practical tasks at Kostenki: obtaining food, processing plants, making tools and maintaining fires. Evidence comes from different sites and periods, rather than a single community whose daily routine can be reconstructed.

A landscape of separate occupations

The Kostenki–Borshchevo sites lie beside the Don River near Voronezh in present-day Russia. Numbered locations such as Kostenki 1, 11 and 16 distinguish excavations; individual locations can also contain several archaeological layers. Some early occupations are placed approximately 45,000–41,000 calibrated years before present. These must be distinguished from later activity, including the mammoth-bone feature at Kostenki 11 investigated in a 2020 study. There was no single timeless Kostenki village. See Hoffecker’s research overview and Pryor and colleagues’ study.

Obtaining and processing animals

Early Upper Palaeolithic deposits contain evidence interpreted as animal-processing locations as well as habitation areas. Horse remains at Kostenki 14 and 15, horse and reindeer remains at Kostenki 12, and butchery traces on a young mammoth at Kostenki 1 show why daily life cannot be reduced to mammoth hunting alone. Processing carcasses was part of the work represented here, but these deposits do not supply a complete menu or a reliable division of labour by age or sex. Hoffecker’s summary of the excavation research identifies the relevant sites and layers.

Plant foods required work too

At Kostenki 16, a study published in 2010 identified starch residues and wear on a stone tool interpreted as having several uses, including pounding or grinding plant material. The authors reported dates for this occupation broadly around 32,000–28,000 calibrated BCE. This evidence adds plant processing to the picture of subsistence, without establishing a particular recipe or the proportion of plants in the diet. Only a few starch grains survived on the examined tool, and their preservation was poor. Revedin and colleagues explain the tool analysis and its limitations.

Fuel and sharp tools

At the later Kostenki 11 mammoth-bone feature, researchers recovered charcoal, burnt bone and tiny stone-working fragments by processing sediment samples. These small remains preserve activities that large bones alone cannot explain. The archaeological study documents this evidence.

The research team’s account describes wood and bone being used as fuel, together with stone chips left by toolmaking. Collecting fuel and producing usable cutting edges therefore belong in a reconstruction of practical work here. Charred seeds and other plant remains were also recovered, although their presence does not establish that every specimen was food. The University of Exeter report summarises these findings.

Was the bone circle a home?

Mammoth-bone circles are often interpreted as dwellings, but the Kostenki 11 study challenges an automatic identification with a long-term residential camp. The limited intensity of activity reported there makes the length and character of occupation uncertain. A reconstruction showing a permanently occupied, fully roofed house would go beyond this evidence. The researchers’ account explains why the familiar dwelling interpretation needs qualification.

Reading the evidence together

These findings support a picture of skilled, practical activities, while leaving household routines uncertain. Plant processing at Kostenki 16 and fire use at Kostenki 11 should not be combined into an eyewitness-style account of one day. The studies discussed here do not establish fixed mealtimes, family arrangements or who performed each task.

Explore the wider Prehistoric daily life collection.