The Middle Dniester Valley Palaeolithic Archaeology Survey focuses on the stretch of the Dniester river valley between the towns of Chotyn and Nonodnistrovsk. This part of the valley includes sites like Moldova I and V and Korman IV. We have been focusing on Middle and Late Pleistocene loess-paleosol exposures along the shores of the Dniester reservoir lake. The reservoir lake flooded many of the older sites (including Moldova I and Korman IV). Other sites like Moldova V are still accessible, but eroded by the reservoir lake's changing water table.

The project team has been surveying the shores of the Dniester reservoir lake. The changing water table creates new exposures in loess slopes of the valley making new archaeological site visible and accessible, as well as renewing the sections regularly. We conduct our surveys using a boat to access these exposures. Site locations are recorded using hand-held GNSS units. 

Surveys have revealed ~13 sites spanning the Middle Palaeolithic to the Late Upper Palaeolithic (roughly 180,000 to 12,000 years ago). The sites include small surface scatters of artefacts as well as multi-layered sites. Interesting among them are the sites Neporotovo 7 (Middle Palaeolithic) and Korman' 9 (Late Upper Palaeolithic) where we conducted test excavations.  

This project is a collaboration with Larissa Kulakovska (Museum of Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences). Further partners are: Vitaly Usik (Museum of Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences), Paul Haesaerts (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences), Stephane Prison (Awap), Freddy Damblon (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences), and Natasha Gerasimenko (University of Kyiv).