Cultural Trends and their Features in the Materials of Stratified Assemblages of the Lower Reaches of Selenga River (Ithantsa Depression, Southeastern Baikal Region)

In: Izvestija Irkutskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta: Bulletin of the Irkutsk State University. Serija "Geoarcheologija. Ėtnologija. Antropologija" = Geoarchaeology, ethnology, and anthropology series, Band 44, S. 3-19

Abstract

The proposed publication presents materials of multilayered geoarchaeological sites of the Southeastern Baikal Region, which have their own specifics of formation. Cultural horizons are included in deposits of subaerial genesis, which mainly form the surfaces of river terraces on the right bank of the main water artery of the region, the Selenga River in its lower reaches. Preliminary cultural and chronological definitions, based on the results of a typological analysis of archaeological collections, demonstrate the dynamics of the development of cultural phenomena from the Final Pleistocene to the Holocene. The main trend, characteristic of almost all the studied sites, demonstrates the "delay" of cultural innovations noted in the archaeological cultures of the eastern coast of Lake Baikal and Western Transbaikalia. As a result of a study of a series of sites in the Itantsa depression (lower reaches of the Selenga River) in the early 2000s, we revealed the stability of the morphological and technical and technological appearance of stone tools in the Final Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic. We also noted the uniformity of the typology of the tool set made of stone and bone, and the stability of the exploitation of a single raw material base (raw materials are of the same type in terms of isotropic characteristics). These characteristics indicate a strong tradition of stone processing for more than 10 thousand years. The situation changes about 3–4 thousand years ago (the beginning of the Paleometal era), which is expressed in the expansion of the raw material base of stone raw materials, although stone processing technologies remain in the same technical traditions. Traditions of ceramic production are represented by fragments of vessels with imprints of woven net and cord, found both in the Neolithic assemblages and in the materials of the cultural horizons of the Early Bronze Age. The obtained materials can serve as initial data for the reconstruction of the development of cultural phenomena against the background of changes in the paleoclimatic situation in the Baikal region as a whole. It should also be concluded that human stay in the southeastern Baikal region is associated with climatic fluctuations towards relatively warm conditions, while the humidity indicator did not play a big role.