Program > By author > Grinina Tatyana

The uniqueness of the famous Late Mesolithic Yuzhny Oleniy Ostrov (YOO) funeral ground partly relates to good preservation of artefacts of organic materials, as in the surrounding territories of Karelia no organic artefacts have usually been preserved. Also big amount of flint arrowheads made on prismatic blades is quite contrasting to lithic assemblages of the surrounding Late Mesolithic archaeological sites.

The nearest and closest parallels to bone (antler) and flint artefacts from the YOO collection are in the Karavaikha 4 archaeological site in the North of the Vologda region, Russia. The site is situated in some 160 km to the south-east from the Onega Lake, at the bank of the Yeloma river (a tributary of the Modlona river), 18 km from its mouth in the Vozhe lake. The site was found in 2002 and 548 sq.m were excavated from 2003 to 2018 under the author's supervision.

The site was considered as a fishing place that was used for hundreds of years by the ancient population. Several wooden fishing traps were found at the site under peat sediments. Artefacts typologically correspond to the Final Mesolithic – Early Neolithic periods. A series of C14 dates cover time from 7340±30 to 5990±100 uncal. bp.

Archaeological collection consists of different types of hunting and fishing tools made of bone, antler, flint and slate, wood and bark. Bone artefacts are presented by spear- and arrowheads, barbed points and harpoons, daggers, tools for net knitting, fishing hooks etc. High quality bright-black and grey flint was used for making blade arrowheads, scrapers, rare trapezoid segments.

Between different types of bone arrowheads needle-shaped and asymmetrical single-barbed arrowheads prevail. Some of them are very similar to arrowheads from the YOO collection, although material from Karavaikha 4 is more variable. Also flint arrowheads have good parallels between the two discussing sites.

Material from Karavaikha 4 site have many parallels in the YOO assemblage, but rather different from the Middle Mesolithic site Pogostische 15 in the Vozhe basin. This can be discussed as chronological changes in material culture, but also could be an evidence of new population appearance in the region in the very end of the Mesolithic.