Azokh caves excavations 2002-2006 : middle upper Palaeolithic transition in Nagorno-Karabagh

Azokh is a limestone cave site in the Lesser Caucasus. The cave has an almost continuous stratigraphic record rich in fossils, which has produced evidence of human activity and tools spanning middle Pleistocene to historic times. A mitldle Pleistocene human mandible fragment was found by an Azeri-Soviet research team that had originally excavated the site between the 1960s and 1980s. Renewed excavations by the present research team have been ongoing since 2002. Both periods of excavation have produced several remarkable finds; here we describe the site and its importance for human evolution.