The Middle Palaeolithic sequence of Ciemna Cave. Some aspects of the site formation process

Ciemna Cave is one of the most important archaeological sites documenting Middle Palaeolithic settlement in Central Europe. It has been excavated since the beginning of the 20^th century, providing rich materials commonly known for their bifacial component linked with the Micoquian. Since 2007 a new project has been underway focusing on the Main Chamber, which had so far been unexplored. The outcome is a much more complex picture environmental context and cultural affinities of the site. This article aims to present key questions concerning the record in the Main Chamber, but also to propose a new interpretation of Ciemna Cave as an extensive, diversified cave system. Using 3D modelling of the bedrock of cave system’s surrounding area, we propose that dynamic filling of the cave impacted settlement there. It was proved also that the sediments in the Main Chamber are homogenous, which enables radiocarbon dating of the undisturbed sequence layers. Although new radiocarbon determinations were made using state-of-the-art pretreatment methods, we still could not fully resolve the problem of dating the upper part of the section, due to age-limit of this method.