The Mesolithic Epoch at the Kolyma River Basin

Abstract

The article is devoted to the history of the study of the Early Holocene antiquities of the Kolyma River basin, the archaeological research of which was started in 1946 by A. P. Okladnikov. During the first stage of work only Neolithic sites were identified. Studies in the 1970s–1980s led researchers to various opinions about the course of the historical development of this region at the turn of the Neo-Pleistocene and Early Holocene. A. Yu. Mochanov, based on the materials he studied on the Lower Kolyma, believed that in the Early Holocene there existed the Sumnagin culture, which he identified in Yakutia. N. N. Dikov singled out the Siberdik and Maltan Kolyma cultures, different from the Sumnagin culture, which, according to his scheme of the historical development of Kolyma, “prevented” Sumnagin culture from the spread both to the Kolyma and to the east of it. This dilemma of the Kolyma materials remained unresolved until recently. In the 1980s–1990s S. B. Slobodin discovered the Early Holocene Uolba culture on the Upper Kolyma with blade stemmed points, which was recorded from Yakutia to Chukotka and Kamchatka. The revision of the materials of the Multan site showed that it was not mistakenly attributed to the early Holocene. In 2017–2020, A. Yu. Zelenskaya explored the Burkhala site on the Upper Kolyma, 9,300 14С years old (10,510 cal. BP) with in situ materials associated with the Sumnagin culture. The outlined contours of the development of cultures in the early Holocene of the Kolyma basin will serve as guidelines both for practical work of identification and field studies of the sites, and for further expansion of the theoretical knowledge about the ancient cultures of the North-East of Russia.