Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 45 (4) 2017   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2017.45.4.003-012

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New Data on the Chronology
of the Initial Neolithic Gromatukha Culture,
Western Amur Region

A.P. Derevianko¹, E.I. Derevianko¹, S.P. Nesterov¹, A.V. Tabarev¹, Kazunori Uchida², Dai Kunikita³, Kazuki Morisaki⁴, and Hiroyuki Matsuzaki⁵

¹Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

²Hokkaido Government Board of Education, Kita 3-jo, Nishi 6-chome, Chuo-ku, Sapporo, 060-8588, Hokkaido, Japan

³Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, 113-0033, Tokyo, Japan

⁴Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan, 3-2-2, Kasumigaseki, chiyoda-ku, 100-8959, Tokyo, Japan

⁵University Museum, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, 113-0033, Tokyo, Japan

Since its discovery in the early 1960s, the chronology of the Neolithic Gromatukha culture in the Western Amur region has undergone radical changes. After the appearance of a series of carbon dates based on charcoal and organic remains in clay texture, its initial attribution to the Early and Middle Neolithic (second half of the 5th to 4th millennia BC) was replaced by a much earlier estimate (from 16–15 to 8 cal ka BP). As a result, Gromatukha became not only one of the most ancient Early Neolithic cultures in the Amur Region, but also one with the earliest pottery among forest and riverine hunter-gatherer cultures. To date, its absolute chronology is based on 34 dates, comprising 9 derived from charcoal, 8 from organic remains in clay texture, and 17 from samples of charred remains on pottery. The latter are analyzed in this article. Comparison of the chronological limits of Gromatukha culture demonstrates that the widest of them concern dates based on organic remains in clay texture (16,260–8010 cal BP); narrower limits relate to estimates based on charred remains on pottery (15,010–9550 cal BP); and the narrowest limits to those based on charcoal (14,820–11,200 cal BP). A new series of dates based on charred remains on pottery indicates a span of 5460 years, which is 2790 years less than that based on organic remains in clay texture, and 1840 years more than what the charcoal-derived estimates suggest.

Keywords: Gromatukha culture, Initial Neolithic, AMS carbon dating