Thirteen cave sites: settlement patterns in Sąspów Valley, Polish Jura Malgorzata Kot 1, * , Natalia Gryczewska 1 , Claudio Berto 1 , Michal Wojenka 2 , Marcin Szeliga 3 , Elz ̇ bieta Jaskulska 1 , Rafal Fetner 1 , Magdalena Krajcarz 4 , Krzysztof Wertz 5 , Katarzyna Zarzecka-Szubińska 6 , Maciej T. Krajcarz 7 , Magdalena Moskal-del Hoyo 8 , Michal Leloch 1 & Michal Jakubczak 9 This project aims to reconstruct the settlement patterns and palaeoenvironment of the Sa ̨ spów Val- ley in the Polish Jura by combining unpublished archaeological fieldwork with results of recent excavations at 13 cave sites. Keywords: Europe, Poland, Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, cave archaeology, palaeoenvironment The southern part of the Polish Jura is a karstic region rich in well-known archaeological cave sites, such as Ciemna, Nietoperzowa, Maszycka, Koziarnia and Mamutowa Cave (Zawisza 1874; Chmielewski 1961; Chmielewski et al. 1967; Kozlowski & Sachse-Kozlowska 1995; Valde-Nowak et al. 2014). Archaeological fieldwork has been conducted in the region since 1871. The caves are mostly located in two major valleys, together over 20km long: the 5km-long Sa ̨ spów Valley and the longer Pra ̨ dnik Valley. The ‘Pra ̨ dnik knife’, a type of Middle Palaeolithic tool, takes its name from the Pra ̨ dnik stream. More than 700 caves are known to exist in the region (Partyka 2018). In 1955, Waldemar Chmielewski started to conduct a series of excavations in the southern Polish Jura. He began by excavating Nietoperzowa Cave in Jerzmanowice—a site well known from Ferdinand Römer’s earlier work (1883). On the basis of the assemblage, which con- tained multiple bifacial leafpoints and was radiocarbon-dated to 38 160±1250 BP 1 Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmies ́ cie 26/28, Warsaw 00-927, Poland 2 Institute of Archaeology, Jagiellonian University, Gole ̨ bia 11, Cracow 31-007, Poland 3 Institute of Archaeology, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Plac M. Curie-Sklodowskiej 4, Lublin 20-031, Poland 4 Institute of Archaeology, Faculty of History, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Szosa Bydgoska 44/48, Toruń 87–100, Poland 5 Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, Slawkowska 17, Cracow 31-016, Poland 6 Department of Paleozoology, Wroclaw University, Sienkiewicza 21, Wroclaw 50-335, Poland 7 Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Twarda 51/55, Warsaw 00-818, Poland 8 W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, Lubicz 46, Cracow 31-512, Poland 9 Institute of Archaeology, Cardinal Wyszyński University, Kazimierza Wóycickiego 1/3, Warsaw 01-938, Poland * Author for correspondence (Email: m.kot@uw.edu.pl ) © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2019 antiquity 93 371, e30 (2019): 1–8 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.155 1 Project Gallery