Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 48 (4) 2020   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2020.48.4.057-066

Annotation:  Early Middle Paleolithic Industries in Southeastern Dagestan Middle Paleolithic Bone Retouchers: Size or Proportions Shulbinka Paleolithic Site, Eastern Kazakhstan, Revisited Con Moong Cave: A Stratifi ed Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Site in Northern Vietnam Novopetrovka III—an Early Neolithic Site in the Western Amur Basin and Its Chronology Peculiarities of Using 2D Electrical Resistivity Tomography in Caves Elk Figurine from Tourist-2, Novosibirsk: Technological and Stylistic Features Foundries at Stary Tartas-5—an Early Bronze Age Site in the Baraba Forest-Steppe Wells as a Source of Cultural and Chronological Information: The Case of Kamennyi Ambar, Southern Tr Mobility of the Suzdal Opolye Settlers in 900–1150 AD Descendants of Eleudei: The Problem of Oirat-Buryat Ethnic Contacts Floral Designs on Sacrifi cial Towels from an Old Believers’ Prayer House The Origin of the Okunev Population, Southern Siberia: The Evidence of Physical Anthropology and Gen The Paleogenetic Study of Bertek-33, an Afanasyevo Cemetery on the Ukok Plateau, the Altai Mountains   

Novopetrovka III—an Early Neolithic Site
in the Western Amur Basin and Its Chronology

A.P. Derevianko^{1, 2}, S.P. Nesterov¹, A.V. Tabarev¹, S.V. Alkin¹, Kazunori Uchida³, Dai Kunikita⁴, Kazuki Morisaki⁵, and Hiroyuki Matsuzaki⁶

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

²Altai State University, Pr. Lenina 61, Barnaul, 656049, Russia

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

⁴Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, 113-0033, Tokyo, Japan

⁵Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan, 3-2-2, Kasumigaseki, chiyoda-ku, 100-8959, Tokyo, Japan

⁶University Museum, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, 113-0033, Tokyo, Japan

This article discusses the chronology of Novopetrovka III—a Neolithic settlement in the Western Amur basin, evaluated by the radiocarbon analysis of charred remains on pottery. The Novopetrovka culture as a whole, represented by Novopetrovka I-III and Konstantinovka sites, which had been excavated in the early 1960s, was dated to the 5th (possibly 6th) to early 4th millennia BC on the basis of the typology of the blade industry. The overview of data on prismatic blades manufactured by the pressure technique demonstrated that blade industries appeared in a vast territory of Eurasia in the Final Pleistocene to Early Holocene and, in certain regions, survived until the Chalcolithic. Therefore, they are only a rough guide to the relative chronology of the sites. In the 1990s, after the appearance of radiocarbon dates generated from samples of organic remains in temper and charred remains on pottery from Novopetrovka II, the culture was redated to 15.5-10.8 cal BP. A comparative analysis of new radiocarbon dates based on charred remains on pottery suggests that the age of Novopetrovka III is 9.0-9.5 thousand years. Because no changes were traced in the Novopetrovka sites over a long period of time, the chronological assessment of the Novopetrovka culture in toto and of its separate sites is problematic.

Keywords: Amur Region, Novopetrovka culture, Early Neolithic, AMS-dates, charred remains, pottery, chronology, Novopetrovka III