The last 30,000 to 600,000 years ago: unravelling the timing of human settlement for the Palaeolithic site of Kozarnika.

Kozarnika cave is a renowned prehistoric site in the Balkans. It contributes significantly to our understanding of the human past due to its rich assemblages associated with the Lower to Upper Palaeolithic periods. The cave was first mentioned in the prehistoric survey carried out before 1933. Years after, in 1996, the site was excavated systematically by Bulgarian-French researchers (Guadelli et al., 2005). Notably, various chronological dating methods have been employed alongside the excavation to unravel the timing of humans' occupation in Kozarnika. Radiocarbon dating was applied to unfold the timeframe for the Kozarnikian tradition uncovered in the Upper Palaeolithic sequence of the cave, and paleomagnetic dating assigned the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal to the layer beneath the Lower Palaeolithic assemblages with the age of 780 ka (Muttoni et al., 2017). This study presents our contribution of employing luminescence-dating methods (OSL, IRSL, pIRIR, VSL, IR-RF) to unravel the reliable timeframes for several geological units and archaeological assemblages. A vast body of techniques has been put together, enabling us to date sediment samples containing the assemblages attributed earlier to the Upper, Middle, and Lower Palaeolithic periods (Guadelli et al., 2005; Sirakov et al., 2010). Our results unravelled that the inhabitants of Kozarnika occupied that region from ca 30 to 600 ka, showing general accordance with the previous dating.