Medzhybizh archeological site

Medzhybizh archeological site [Палеолітична стоянка в Меджибожі; Paleolitychna stoianka v Medzhybozhi]. A multi-occupational archeological site of the Paleolithic Period situated on the left bank of the Boh River near the town of Medzhybizh and the village of Holovchyntsi in Letychiv raion, Khmelnytskyi oblast. The site was first investigated in 1914 by Vladimir Laskarev, but more important archeological finds were discovered there only in the 1950s and 1960s during the excavations conducted by such archeologists as Valerii Piasetsky and Petro Hozhyk. Particularly significant extensive excavations of the site, conducted by specialists from the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv University, and the Institute of Geography of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, took place in 2008, 2009, 2011–3, and 2017. It was during these excavations that some of the oldest Acheulean culture artefacts in Ukraine were found at the Holovchyntsi-1 location. Stone and flint tools found there may date back to ca. 900,000 BC or even earlier. This makes this site in Podilia the oldest Paleolithic occupation in Ukraine east of the Carpathian Mountains. It is almost as old (or perhaps even equally old) as the oldest Acheulean layers at the Korolevo archeological site in Transcarpathia. The more recent flint tools found at the Medzhybizh site date back to ca. 400,000 BC.

Marko Robert Stech

[This article was written in 2020.]