Archaeologia Baltica

The East Baltic Stone Age is well known for its rich array of bone and antler artefacts. The collections consist of stray finds as well as inventory from stratified settlement sites. Seven hunting and fishing tool complexes, made from bone and antler, were singled out in Latvia, characterising each stage of the Baltic Stone Age. The oldest of these complexes was formed at the very end of the Late Glacial period when the ice sheet retreated and the conditions for human habitation were created. This complex consists of 18 bone and antler artefacts, harpoons of archaic forms and spearheads, found in Latvia and Lithuania. Unfortunately, they are all stray finds and determined as Late Palaeolithic only typologically. Harpoons in similar morphological forms are known from all of northwest and Central Europe, associated with Late Palaeolithic reindeer hunter cultures. Some of the finds were made from reindeer antler. The new carbon 14 data of reindeer bones, obtained in Helsinki University by H. Jungner, testified to the presence of reindeer in the Eastern Baltic from Alleröd times till the beginning of the Preboreal climatic period.

In the light of the present findings from Pagóry Chełmskie the flint deposited on the surface occurs in two types. One type often resembles the shaft varieties from Volhynia, Podolia and Volhynian Polesie, or even Podlasie. Most Final Palaeolithic finds represent the settlements of cultures with point-tools tradition, mostly Swiderian Culture, some of them are connected with an undetermined culture with backed points, one site with the inventories of Magdalenian Culture.

The site of Rostislavl is located on the right high bank of the Oka river near the town of Ozyory (Moscow region). Tanged points from the Rostislavl site are similar to the ones spread in the Alleröd-Dryas III period on the sites of northern Germany, Poland, the Upper Volga (Podol III and Ust-Tudovka I), and in the Upper Dnieper (Anosovo I) regions etc. This fact allows us to assume, at this stage of research, the Final Palaeolithic age of the Rostislavl site as the most probable.

Transversal arrowheads (trapezia) are a characteristic type of hunting implement of some Final Palaeolithic-Early Mesolithic cultures of Eastern Europe. These cultures were studied in the Volga-Oka basin (Ienevo Culture), the Middle Dnieper-Desna basin (Pisochny Riv Culture), the Lower Dnieper-Donets region (Zimivnyki Culture) and the Volga-Kama confluence (Oust-Kamskaya Culture). Issues of origin and fate still remain debatable. An interest in the formation and interaction of Volga-Dnieper cultures with transversal arrowheads in their inventory is induced by their specific geographical position as well as a permanent increase in data. Discussions of the genesis of these trapezium complexes has tended to focus on two variants: 1) within Post-Ahrensburgian industries due to some factors (natural or social); 2) from west Asian-Caucasian cultures with geometric tools. Probably the first variant is most likely to be attributed to Ienevo and Pisochny Riv, and the second is preferable for Zimivnyki and Oust-Kamskaya. Cultures in the Dnieper-Donets and Middle Volga basins, on the basis of the great variety of trapezia, are assumed to represent an area of crossing of cultural tradition. The forms of this crossing need to be concretised in the course of further research.

The analysis of palynological, radiocarbon and geological methods dating of archaeological sites of the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene in Central Russia and the revision of available and not numerous dates shows that for mineral grounds these methods require serious correction, and the dates themselves do not correspond in most cases to the typological age of the archaeological materials.

The Swiders of Ukrainian Polissya used mainly local raw materials. The final preparation of pre-core for usage was forming the platform and the working surface. The main Swiderian type of core of Ukrainian Polissya is double opposite platform cores with one working surface. A typical form of Swiderian pressure cores of Ukrainian Polissya is cone-shaped and pencil-shaped. Microblades were made to be inserts into arrowheads of organic material. The joining of organic and stone elements for producing narrow-slot points is not traditional for Swiderian technology in Ukrainian Polissya. The technology, which fuses organic materials with stone elements for producing narrow-slot points, is typical of Steppe cultures. This tradition is from Kukrek Culture.

This article addresses the complicated issues of the primary population of the forest zone in Eastern Europe at the turn of the Pleistocene-Holocene and the forms of its occupation by humans.

Today four different expressive versions of local Epigravettian industries represented by groups of sites can be defined in the Middle Dnieper basin: Mezinian, Ovruchian, Mezhirichian and Yudinovian industries. In addition, two other quite specific ones are represented by single collections: Eliseevichi 1 and Zhuravka.

Gebiet des unteren Wislaflusses wurde besiedelt von den Menschen nach dem Rückzug des Gletschers erst in der Allerödzeit. Es handelte sich wahrscheinlich um Schöpfer der Rückenspitzen-Kultur. Es kann jedoch nicht ausgeschlossen werden, das diese Gebiete gleichzeitig von Gruppen der Lyngby und Hamburger Kultur besiedelt wurden.

Local and exotic flint use and distribution are considered as markers of group mobility. The Arch Backed Pieces and the Mazovian societies organised logistics expeditions in various directions, south-north, west-east, using natural routes as river valleys, but also crossing mountains. Their motives seem to be different and not only connected with economic necessity and subsistence strategy. Group mobility, observed rarely on distances more than tens of hundreds of kilometres, was probably a seasonal event, but sometimes may be a reflection of a permanent exodus.