Pages: 228-247

Till now the Upper Palaeolithic sites are quite poorly represented in the Crimea. One of the most promising Crimean regions for search of new Upper Paleolithic sites is the Bodrak river valley in south-western Crimea, which yield flint outcrops with good quality flints and some already recognized in situ Upper Paleolithic sites (e. g. Skalistiy rock-shelter, lower layers; Skalistiy open-air site). During a special survey of 1996 in the Bodrak river valley there was found a new in situ Upper Palaeolithic site named Bodrak. Field works at the site in 1996 were limited to excavations of 2×1m test sondage, which gave 5 archaeological horizons divided by sterile sediments. All finds are just flint artifacts with no fauna materials. Core-like and debitage pieces constitute the basis of the received collections. Pieces with secondary treatment and/or use traces are extremely represented by mostly atypical specimens and their quantity does not exceed 2% of any collection.
By artifacts categories, all archaeological horizons of the Bodrak site represent workshops located at a flint outcrop. The workshops are first of all characterized by intensive primary flaking processes with an impressive blade production from mainly narrow-flaked blade cores from the functional point of view.
Industrially the Bodrak site belongs to Epi-Gravettian technocomplex. Its artifacts have some clear analogies to materials of Skalistiy rock-shelter, lower layers; Skalistiy open-air site; Siuren I rock-shelter, upper layer; Adzhi-Koba cave, upper layer; Buran-Kaya III rock-shelter, layer 6; Vishennoye II open-air site located both in south-western and eastern Crimea. Further field works at Bodrak site are for sure very promising for establishing detailed technological data on main features and peculiarities of Epi-Gravettian primary flaking processes. The same is also true for new search of other Upper Paleolithic sites in Bodrak valley for a possible finding of a base camp there.