Stone Industry of the Bronze and Iron Ages Border (case study of the Oralovskoe Ozero II settlement on the Vishera River)

Abstract

The authors publish the data on the stone assemblage of the Oralovskoe Ozero II settlement, 9th – 8th century B.C., the Kama River basin, Perm Krai, Russian Federation. Examination of the traces of processing on the flint artefacts made it possible to determine its basic characteristics. These are a stadial knapping; secondary bifacial thinning; heat treatment of the raw material to prepare it for knapping; leaf-shaped bifaces with a straight base – arrowheads and dart/spear points, decorated at the fnal stage with «serrated» retouching; unifacial scrapers. The search for assemblages with similar characteristics allowed to determine in the extreme north-east of Europe (the basins of the Pechora, Vychegda and Mezen rivers) a special tradition of the flint tools production of the Bronze and Iron Ages boundary. Reference stone assemblages accompany different types of pottery and their combinations: Korshak and Lebyazhskaya cultures, Ananyino cultural-historical community and ceramics with “cross-like” ornamentation. This indicates that mobile foragers established links with tundra and taiga cultures, uniting them into a single network of the Bronze and Iron Age boundary in the north-east of Europe. A detailed analysis of the identifed stone-working tradition, its naming, the search for origins and spatial and temporal variants is needed in the future.

Keywords

• archaeology
• perm region
• vishera river
• stone assemblage
• flint
• biface
• arrowhead
• scraper
• korshak culture
• lebyazhskaya culture
• gamayun culture
• ananyino cultural-historical community