Revisiting Criteria of Neolithic Industries on Ust-Kutarey Sites in the North Angara Region

Abstract

As a result of rescue archaeological investigations in the North Angara region due to the Boguchanskaya hydro-electric power plant, many archaeological sites were found, including Ust-Kutarey, Senkin Kamen, Ruchey Povarny, Gora Kutarey. Now active analyses and introduction to scientific use are in process. Due to the specifics of forming cultural sediments and problematic of research of the materials of the region, detailed research, planigraphic analyses and comparison with adjacent and the same age sites in the region become the most important. As a result of a detailed study of the archaeological materials of the Ust-Kutarey site, conditionally “pure” and mixed (with an admixture of Bronze-Medieval Age ceramics) Neolithic complexes were identified. To provide a clearer understanding of the situation in the Ust-Kutarey microregion as a whole, a collection of samples was assembled for a comparative analysis of the materials from the adjacent sites (Gora Kutarey and Senkin (Siniy) Kamen). The research allowed to determine that the territory in the mouth of the Kutarey River was a location with the concentrated production of small laminar splits, and the Gora Kutarey site was a location for the production of adzes, axes, and fan-type scrapers. This article is to summarize previous research data as well as to provide new data on target laminar blanks. As a result, although somewhat conditionally, we could define an earlier (middle) Neolithic (Horizon 2, Layer 2 at the Ust-Kutarey site) and later Neolithic (Layer 3, Horizon 1, Layer 2 at the Ust-Kutarey site, Gora Kutarey).