Pages: 271-290

Until recently, it was thought that the Middle Trans-Urals was settled by humans only during the Late Mesolithic. Presence of polished tools for chopping wood at Mesolithic sites was one of the arguments in favor of this view. The fieldwork conducted by the authors at the Gorbunovo peat bog in Sverdlovsk region revealed cultural layers of the Early, Middle and Late Mesolithic buried in lake and bog deposits. A series of 14C dates together with pollen data place these layers into an interval from the early Pre-Boreal to late Boreal periods. All these layers yielded tools for chopping made of various non siliceous rocks, as well as their preforms and waste products. The latter indicates that the manufacturing of these tools took place directly on-site. The article presents the results of morphological, technological and traceological analyses of these artefacts. It is shown that tools for chopping, including polished ones, emerged in the Trans-Urals (and in some parts of Eastern Europe as well) in the very beginning of the Mesolithic and remained in use till the very end of this period. The authors see the explanation of this phenomenon, first, in the scarcity of siliceous raw materials suitable for the production of wood cutting tools and, second, in the abundance of various non siliceous rocks good for the manufacture of ground axes, adzes and abrasive tools.

Keywords: Middle Trans-Urals, Mesolithic, Gorbunovski peat bog, stone, tools for chopping, technical and morphological analysis, traceological analysis

Information about authors:

Mikhail Zhilin (Moscow, Russian Federation). Doctor of Historical Sciences. Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dmitry Ulyanov St., 19, Moscow, 117036, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
Lyubov Kosinskaya (Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Ural Federal State University. Lenin Ave., 51, Yekaterinburg, 620083, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
Svetlana Savchenko (Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation). Sverdlovsk Regional Museum. Malyshev St., 46, Yekaterinburg, 620151, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]