Archaeologia Baltica

This paper presents the latest data on a spindle-shaped decorated bone dagger, which was found as a stray find in the village of Šarnelė in northwest Lithuania, and which recently been dated to the Final Palaeolithic. It is currently the only one such example of osseous technology in Lithuania dated to this period. In 2016, we started to reinvestigate the Stone Age material from the Samogitian highland by AMS radiocarbon (14C) dating, stable isotopes, use-wear and Raman methods. AMS dating showed that the decorated dagger discovered in the surroundings of the drained Lake Ertenis and the River Varduva at Šarnelė currently is one of the oldest prehistoric art objects found in Lithuania and possibly in the eastern Baltic region as well. The dagger was also analysed by use-wear method, which helped to identify some stages of the production of the article itself and its decoration. The paper presents the first results of research of this artefact in the wider geographical and taxonomic context of the Final Palaeolithic in northern Europe.

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.

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.

Desna Culture fits the Tanged Points Culture standard perfectly. This culture is related to Tanged Points Culture in that it regularly yields shouldered points and oblique trapezes on flakes. Five types of single-barbed Havel-type harpoons were mapped. According to this mapping, Havel-type harpoons are divisions with three zones, which correspond to Swiderian, Ahrensburgian and Desnenian areas.