Blade with Engraving from the Initial Upper Palaeolithic Complex of A.P. Okladnikov Palaeolithic Workshop

Abstract

The article presents the main results of analyzing a stone blade with an engraving originating from cultural horizon 4 of the A.P. Okladnikov Palaeolithic Workshop (Eastern Trans-Baikal). The stratigraphic position and the technical and typological characteristics of horizon 4 lithic assemblage make it possible to date this artifact to the early Upper Paleolithic. We studied the blade through analyses of technological features and experimental-traceological techniques supplemented by the results of three-dimensional modelling. Analysis of the blade residual platform has shown traces of the core platform preparation through pecking - a specific technique common in the Initial Upper Palaeolithic complexes of North and Central Asia. The blade retained a fragment of the engraving in the form of a set of long cuts made by an instrument with a У-shaped blade on the natural surface of the nodule before it was knapped. Most of the cuts are arranged in a row and slanted towards the longitudinal axis of the artefact; cut marks intersect one another at an acute angle. We assume that the engraving performed is not associated with symbolic activity but represents marking the core preform or the raw material nodule. We can interpret the semantic meaning of such marks as a sign of ownership or a particular value of the marked raw material. This assumption is consistent with the recorded high quality of the raw material from which the blade was produced and the site functionality. A.P. Okladnikov Palaeolithic workshop is located at the primary deposits of raw materials, from where the lithic material was transported for further use at sites and settlements in the Ingoda River valley.