Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 52 (4) 2024   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2024.52.4.059-074

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Rocks and Their Sources in the Upper Paleolithic of the Altai:
Relevance to Bifacial Technologies

A.V. Vishnevsky^{1, 2}, N.E. Belousova¹, A.Y. Fedorchenko¹, V.A. Mikhienko¹, M.B. Kozlikin¹, and M.V. Shunkov¹

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

²Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Koptyuga 3, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

On the basis of the analysis of thin leaf-shaped bifacial points, which are very elaborate and sensitive to the quality of rocks, we reconstruct the adaptive strategies of humans at the early stages of the Upper Paleolithic. Mineral raw materials and their exploitation relating to different resource bases of the central (the Ursul River basin) and northwestern (the Anuy River basin) parts of the Altai region are analyzed. To attribute the rock sources for bifaces, we have compiled a comparative database of petrographic and petrochemical characteristics of artifacts and pebbles from nearby rivers. Chemical criteria were proposedfor differentiating rocks, including those that are hard to distinguish, and non-destructive techniques were applied to assess the chemical composition of rocks using a portable XRF spectrometer. Findings suggest that rocks available in the Anuy and Ursul basins met the conditions for biface manufacture. Bifaces from the Ursul valley were made of local fine-grained rocks—felsic volcanic tuff and ignimbrite; those from the Anuy valley were also of local rocks, but of lower quality—hornfels transformed (meta-sedimentary) siltstone and finegrained sandstone or felsic volcanic rocks. In the Anuy valley, scarcity of quality raw material was compensated for by imported high silica jasper-like rocks. Results suggest that the Early Upper Paleolithic inhabitants of the region, when implementing technical skills, showed stable behavioral and technological stereotypes despite habitat change and deterioration of the resource base.

Keywords: Thin bifaces, raw material strategies, petrochemistry, X-ray fluorescence analysis (pXRF), portable XRF, scanning electron microscopy (SEMEDS)