V. Pohar's scientific contributions

... While much of the debate surrounding the Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites revolves around the question of whether bears were actively hunted or scavenged, only in the Upper Paleolithic does direct confrontation between humans and bears become clearly visible in the archeological record. Traumatic injuries from hunting spears on cave bear skeletal elements, like the thoracic vertebra with an embedded flint point from the Gravettian layer of Hohle Fels (Germany) Münzel and Conard, 2004;Münzel et al., 2001) and the healed wound on a cave bear shoulder blade from Potočka zijalka Cave (Slovenia) putatively ascribed to the Aurignacian (Rabeder and Pohar, 2004;Withalm, 2004) are an unequivocal sign of human aggression toward bears and hint to increased levels of interaction between the two species. At the same time the production of ornaments made from bear canines, such as those found at the Initial Upper Paleolithic site of Bacho Kiro (Bulgaria) (Smith et al., 2021), at the Aurignacian sites of Abri Castanet (France) (Armand, 2006), Hohle Fels, Geißenklösterle (Kölbl and Conard, 2003;Münzel and Conard, 2004;Münzel et al., 2001) and Bocksteinhöhle (Germany) (Hahn, 1977;Kitagawa et al., 2012), and at the Gravettian sites of Kraków Spadzista (Poland) and Pavlov I (Czech Republic) (Wojtal et al., 2015), underpins the important symbolic value ascribed to these animals. ...

... Capreolus capreolus and Sus scrofa, Mauch Lenardi c et al., 2018). In Slovenia, two main sites related to the Late Pleistocene are Divje Babe 1 and Poto cka Zijalka (Rabeder et al., 2004;To skan and Kry stufek, 2007), the former chronologically assigned from MIS 5 to MIS 3 and the latter to MIS 3. Divje Babe 1 is characterized by an assemblage dominated by Clethrionomys glareolus and Chionomys nivalis, while Sicista subtilis is evidenced in a layer correlated to MIS 5. At Poto cka Zijalka, Microtus oeconomus has been identified in the upper layers. ...