CHRONOLOGY OF THE NEOLITHIC AND ENEOLITHIC SITES IN THE FOREST-STEPPE TRANS-URALS

Abstract

To date, more than 50 sites with Neolithic layers have been explored in the forest-steppe Trans-Urals. Of these, at least 20 were excavated at different times and in different areas. The sites presented in this study are located from the eastern slope of the Southern Trans-Urals up to the confluence of the Miass River with the Iset River (Tashkovo I). At the moment, 58 radiocarbon dates are available for 13 sites. The dates are not evenly distributed among the sites. It is quite difficult to consider the relative chronology of the Neolithic sites of the forest-steppe Trans-Urals, since not all sites have radiocarbon dating, there are practically no dates obtained by the AMS-method, and most dating sites have a very large confidence interval. For the first time, the Neolithic population of the Kozlovskaya tradition appeared in the forest-steppe of the Trans-Urals at the beginning of the 6th millennium BC at the Tashkovo I settlement. The late Neolithic complexes of the Poludenskaya and Boborykino traditions appear in the second half of the 6th millennium BC and occupy most of the 5th millennium BC. In the Eneolithic of the forest-steppe Trans-Urals, almost throughout the middle of the 5th to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC almost all existing cultural traditions continued to coexist. It should be noted that the earliest tradition in the Eneolithic of the region was the tradition of ornamentation with a comb stamp with simple (linear) and geometric patterns.