Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 50 (1) 2022   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2022.50.1.048-056

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Ornaments Made from Unio Shells in a Neolithic Burial
at Ust-Aleika-5, Barnaul, Southwestern Siberia

V.B. Borodaev¹, K.Y. Kiryushin², D.V. Kuzmenkin³, and K.N. Solodovnikov⁴

¹Altai State Pedagogical University, Molodezhnaya 55, Barnaul, 656031, Russia

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

³Tigirek State Natural Reserve, Nikitina 111, Barnaul, 656043, Russia

⁴Institute of Northern Development, Tyumen Scientific Center, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Malygina 86, Tyumen, 625026, Russia

The search for a Mongolian era cemetery at Ust-Aleika, Kalmansky District, Altai Territory, in 1982 revealed a Neolithic child burial, which was excavated. The funerary items included over 300 artifacts made of organic and inorganic materials, among them more than a hundred pendants made from fossil Pleistocene shells of Unio mollusks, which do not occur in the Ob basin at present. These thick-walled shells had been procured from the Kalistratikha I exposure on the left bank of the Ob. The pendants had been made according to a hitherto unknown technique: they are irregularly ellipsoid with segment-shaped longitudinal and transverse sections. The thickness of the shells allowed the artisans to use relief, which is difficult or impossible with shells of modern bivalves from the Upper Ob basin. Burial 2 at Ust-Aleika-2 dates to the middle or late 4th millennium BC. It belongs to the same cultural and chronological group as burials 1 and 5-9 at Solontsy-5, and a double burial at Bolshoi Mys (Itkul), excavated by V.I. Molodin in 1976.

Keywords: Child burial, Neolithic, Barnaul area, Ob basin, ornaments, Unio shells