Paleolithic of the Yenisey (1998)

Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1998

The Enisei River Pleistocene

Richard S. Davis a

of Central Siberia in the Late

Recent Paleolithic work along the middle Enisei River of central Siberia has revealed a long history of occupation that almost certainly begins in the Middle Pleistocene. Although the evidence for the Lower Paleolithic is somewhat tentative, there is good reason to believe that hunter-gatherers had periodically occupied the middle Enisei before the last interglacial. The steppe environment of the region during the Upper Pleistocene was relatively bountiful; more than 200 Upper Paleolithic sites, both before and after the Last Glacial Maximum, have been located. The region appears to have been abandoned during the Last Glacial Maximum. Most of Soviet and Russian archaeological work has been guided by a cultural-historical orientation, but recently there has been increased interest in developing adaptationist and ecological research strategies. The middle Enisei and the wider central Siberian region are key to understanding early adaptations to the north and the dimensions of Paleolithic population movements.

KEY WORDS: Siberian Paleolithic; Enisei River; Late Pleistocene; Russia.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The collapse of the Soviet state at the beginning of this decade brought major changes to Russian archaeology. Severe economic stress has slowed research and publication, and archaeological institutions have faced many challenges. For the first time, however, a large number of previously closed areas have opened to foreigners, and joint research ventures are increasing. In the context of this new accessibility there is an increased need to learn

1Department of Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College, 101 N. Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvannia 19010-2899.

169

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170 Davis

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The Enisei River of Siberia in the Late Pleistocene 171

the results of previous Paleolithic research and to determine the direction in which prevailing research is heading. Some consideration also should be given to the legacy of the Marxist-influenced work of the Soviet past. To investigate some of these issues, I turn to central Siberia, with special emphasis on the Enisei River. Until about 1990 most of the Enisei had been closed to foreign visitors, and little was known of recent work. Much more was known about the Altai region to the west and the Baikal region to the east. Paleolithic archaeological investigation of the Enisei, which began when the Romanovs still ruled and continued throughout the time of Soviet power, is now at the beginning of a totally new period.

Paleolithic research in central Siberia has been concentrated in three main areas: the Altai Mountains, the middle course of the Enisei, and the upper Angara River near Lake Baikal (Fig. 1). No doubt contributing to this focus has been the proximity of major research centers joined by the Trans-Siberian Railroad: Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk. The most well-known localities from the Altai region are cave sites, while open-air sites are the rule on the Enisei and the Angara. Z. A. Abramova (1979b, p. 192) has concluded on the basis of her comprehensive knowledge of southern Siberia that the whole area during the Upper Paleolithic may be considered one "cultural oblast'" [a cultural zone, according to Formozov (1977), that is basically akin to the American concept of a culture area]. A. P. Derevianko and S. V. Markin (1987, p. 54) have lent support to this conceptualization based on their work in the Altai and Mongolia. Whether or not this cultural oblast construct has utility for defining the past of this region, it is certain that southern Siberia has vast archaeological resources. It is an area close in size to western Europe; at times during the last glacial period it quite possibly had populations of nearly equal magnitude.

The Enisei River runs through the middle of Siberia, connecting the highlands of the geographic center of Asia with the Arctic Ocean. The Enisei has been the subject of Paleolithic research for over a century. The first major site on the Enisei was opened by I. T. Savenkov in 1884 at Afon- tova Gora on the edge of Krasnoyarsk, a large industrial city on the Trans- Siberian Railroad (Abramova, 1979a) (Fig. 2). The site remains crucial to our understanding of the Upper Paleolithic sequence on the Enisei, in fact, N. I. Drozdov and colleagues from the Laboratory of Archaeology and Pa- leogeography in Krasnoyarsk resumed excavations at the site in 1992. The modern period of research on the Enisei began after the Second World War and accelerated in tandem with the construction of the dam just south of Krasnoyarsk at Divnogorsk in the middle 1960s. The reservoir's capacity of 73,300 x 106 m 3 is the eighth largest in the world. Over the past three decades there has been a number of active field programs primarily by archaeologists from institutions in St. Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk. Chief

172 Davis

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among these archaeologists are Z. A. Abramova, N. E Lisitsin, S. A. Va- sil'ev, and N. I. Drozdov. Their work has brought the total number of known Paleolithic sites to over two hundred (Abramova et al., 1991). Thus, this area of central Siberia is no longer the proverbial "blank space" on the archaeological map. Generally speaking, however, the results of this work have not been widely incorporated into the thinking and analysis of specialists residing outside Russia. The reasons for this are fairly obvious. Among them have been political restrictions, Eurocentric bias, the general remoteness of the area to other centers of Paleolithic research, and language barriers. Now, however, even with the present economic difficulties, the new Russian government and ease of access have made central Siberia much more open to the international community. The Enisei can now be integrated more completely into world prehistory.

In this review the main focus is on the Enisei, with some reference to other regions of southern Siberia. Although the emphasis is on current work, there are several references to previous research. This should assist readers unfamiliar with Russian and Soviet archaeology, as well as the ac- companying theoretical outlooks and problem orientations.

Recently, Russian scholars have published substantial reviews of the Paleolithic Enisei. Most prominent is Paleolit Eniseia [The Paleolithic of the Enisei (Abramova et al., 1991)], a multiauthored work by a team of investigators from St. Petersburg. One of them, S. A. Vasil'ev (1992b), has published in English a summary of work on the Late Paleolithic 2 of the middle Enisei in the Journal o f World Prehistory. For the entire region of southern Siberia, Z. Abramova's (1989) Paleolit Severnoi Azii [The Paleo- lithic of Northern Asia] is a good basic reference, and her works on the Afontova (1979a) and Kokorevo (1979b) cultures of the Enisei are important sources for the Late Paleolithic of the Enisei. Derevianko (1990) gave an excellent introduction to the Altai region, as did Medvedev, Savel'ev, and Svinin (1990) for the Baikal area.

English-language readers do not have a large selection of sources. One of the first reviews of the Siberian Paleolithic was by R. Klein (1971). C. Chard (1974) summarized northeast Asian prehistoric archaeology at about the same time. H. Michael (1984) brought this area up to date in a detailed and systematic monograph that is particularly rich in geological and chronological data for the major sites of northeast Asia. In addition to Vasil'ev (1992b) mentioned above, Larichev, Khol'uskin, and Laricheva (1987, 1988, 1990, 1992) have presented reviews of major Siberian work. Not long ago, Yu. Mochanov (1993) presented a paper in English on his work at the con-

2"Late Paleolithic" is the English translation of the Russian "pozdnii paleolit," and it is close in meaning to the European "Upper Paleolithic."

174 Davis

troversial site of Diring, located on the Lena River near Yakutsk. Goebel et al. (1993) have reported AMS dates of the Middle Paleolithic/Upper Paleolithic transition to before 43,000 years at Kara-Bom, an open-air site in the Altai region.

Russian research efforts along the Enisei for many years have shared a number of common themes. In briefest form the most commonly referred to problems and areas of investigation are (1) the identification of regional and local variants of archaeological cultures and their chronology, (2) the initial appearance of hunter-gatherers in central Siberia and their places of origin, (3) Pleistocene environments and stratigraphy, and (4) lithic tech- nology.

In North American parlance the above concerns would fall basically into the domain of culture history. While it is true that cultural chronology and the description of assemblage variation have dominated Russian publications on central Siberia, it is important to point out that diachronic, developmental interests have always been central to Russian archaeologists (Davis, 1983). Additionally, the tendency during the Soviet period was to look for processes of change within the social system and to minimize the role of external, environmental factors. In recent years there has been increased attention to human ecology and adaptation, but this research orientation is in its initial stages. A good example of this trend in the Enisei region is the symposium held in Krasnoyarsk in 1992, entitled "Paleoecol- ogy and Settlement of Ancient Peoples in North Asia and America" (Dere- vianko et al., 1992a).

Faunal analysis has been recognized as an important aspect of archaeology for many years, but the main thrust of the work has been either biostratigraphic, with an emphasis on chronology, or the listing of species present with frequencies of total bones per species. In short, faunal data have not been extensively developed within an ecosystemic framework. N. M. Ermolova has analyzed faunal materials from many sites on the Enisei and for years collaborated with Z.A. Abramova on a series of archaeological expeditions (Ermolova, 1985). N. D. Ovodov also has studied archaeofaunas on the Enisei for many years. In sum, the major research orientation has long been within the domain of culture history; new approaches are only slowly being realized.

Because the middle Enisei is an airline distance of some 5000 km from the Bering Strait, discussions concerning the first Americans infrequently involve this area. The Enisei, however, should not be ignored in this regard. Bifaces, prismatic blade cores, piOces esquill~es, and various Upper Paleo- lithic tool classes found on the middle Angara at the site of Ust' Kova have led some investigators to look to central Siberia as a possible source for early North American lithic technologies (Goebel et a t , 1992). It is


certainly appropriate to consider what possible connections may have existed between central Siberia and lands to the northeast. Eurasian Upper Paleolithic groups are known to have interacted throughout very large ter- ritories and across major drainages. For example, the distribution of the so-called Venus figurines "extend in areal distribution over some 2000 km from the SW to the NE," and they may represent the interaction of a cultural system within a fairly narrow band of time (Gamble, 1986, p. 324). The distance between the south of France and the Ukraine, however, is less than half the distance from the middle Enisei to Alaska; clearly we have much to learn about the movements of Upper Paleolithic peoples.

BASIC GEOGRAPHY

It is always difficult to identify some particular geographic area as a meaningful unit of analysis for the Paleolithic. To some it might appear at first that the Enisei Valley would be an appropriate area for archaeological analysis, but its enormous scale and ecological diversity make it far from a simple natural area.

In the most basic terms, the whole of Siberia is divisible into western and eastern portions, and the Enisei marks the boundary. As a further sub- division, central Siberia lies between the Enisei and the Lena Rivers, and it is a single geologic unit: the Central Siberian Plateau (Suslov, 1961, p. 187). To the west of the Enisei lie the Western Siberian Lowland and the Altai Mountains, which are drained by the Ob' and Irtysh Rivers. The headwaters of the Ob' run very close to the Enisei, and these two rivers are separated by a low divide running north from Krasnoyarsk. Virtually all of the major drainages of the Enisei are to the east on the Central Siberian Plateau. This plateau is formed of Pre-Cambrian rocks and has the general appearance of a horizontal tableland.

The Enisei is one of the world's longest rivers. Its total length is some 4130 km, just slightly longer than the Mississippi River. It drains an area of approximately 2,600,000 km 2, about 87% of the Mississippi drainage. It flows mostly due north from its sources in the Eastern Sayan Mountains, which border Mongolia. It reaches the Kara Sea at about 74~ At 58~ the Enisei is joined by the Angara River, which flows north and west some 1350 km from Lake Baikal. Conventionally, the Enisei is divided into the upper--from its headwaters to the city of Abakan in the Minusinsk depression; the middle--from Abakan to the confluence of the Angara; and the lower--from the Angara to the Kara Sea.

The Enisei begins in Tuva, a basin surrounded by the Eastern and Western Sayans and the Tannu-Ola Mountains. It flows north down a deep

176 Davis

gorge cut through the Western Sayans into the Minusinsk basin, a large steppe and forest-steppe zone. Northward from Minusinsk the Enisei flows through the Krasnoyarsk steppe zone, an island of steppe vegetation, and then soon reaches the taiga (boreal forest) near the mouth of the Angara River. From there it crosses the Enisei ridge and then runs along the western edge of the Central Siberian Plateau to its mouth in the Kara Sea.

Thus along its course the Enisei cuts across several biotic zones. In its southernmost reaches it flows through open grasslands and forest-steppe country. Virtually all of the archaeological work has taken place in this zone. In fact, the northernmost Paleolithic site known on the Enisei is Druzhinika, which is located at the northern end of the forest-steppe zone just above Krasnoyarsk. Farther north, the main extent of the Enisei is found within the taiga. In the far north there is a relatively narrow belt of tundra and forest-tundra. These latter biotic zones may eventually reveal Paleolithic settlement, but because of their relative inaccessibility, there has been little survey to date.

Siberia is notorious for its severe winter weather. The modern climate is profoundly continental with extremely low winter temperatures, but comparatively high temperatures in summer. Precipitation is generally low, usu- ally less than 500 mm, and due to the intense winter anticyclone, the winter is ordinarily dry. This results in relatively thin snow cover. The lack of a thick blanket of snow coupled with the clear skies of winter and the low temperature extremes have led to the growth of permafrost. The modern limit of permafrost lies to the east of the upper Enisei, but scattered islands of permanently frozen ground do occur today at higher elevations in Tuva and the Western Sayan Mountains.

PLEISTOCENE CENTRAL SIBERIA

Over the last 50 years there has been considerable work on Pleistocene stratigraphy, palynology, and geochronology. Virtually all archaeological field projects are referred to as "complex" expeditions because there is in- evitably an attempt to make a significant inclusion of geologists, palynolo- gists, pedologists, geomorphologists, and other environmental specialists. There also are geologists who have long specialized in geoarchaeology and have done extensive fieldwork throughout enormous tracts of Siberia and elsewhere. The most well known is S. M. Tseitlin (1979) whose Geologiia paleolita Severnoi Azii [The Geology of the Paleolithic of Northern Asia] is a modern classic in this field. In it he records and interprets the stratigraphy for all of the major Paleolithic sites known at that time, and he provides an excellent summary and synthesis in his final chapter.

The Enisei River of Siberia in the Late Pleistocene

Table I. Late Pleistocene Chronology of the Middle Enisei (Based on Drozdov, 1992;Kind, 1974)

177

Thousand Division years, B.P. Middle Enisei site(s)

Holocene

Sartan Stadial

Karginsk Interstadial

Zyriansk Stadial

Kazantsev (cf. Riss/Wurm)

Tazovsk (cf. Riss 2)

10.3

22

65

100

130

180

Listvenka (19), 16,300 _+ 600 Afontova Gora II, 20,900 ___ 300

Kashtanka-1, 23,830 _+ 850 Ust'-Kova (middle), 23,920 - 310 Ust'-Kova (lower), 30,100 _+ 1500 Malaia Syia, 34,500 _+ 450

Ust'-Izhul' Verkhnii Kamen' (?) Berezhekovo

In the middle Enisei region, S. M. Tseitlin, V. P. Chekha, and S. A. Laukhin have worked out the fundamental stratigraphic succession for the Middle and Upper Pleistocene (Chekha and Laukhin 1992; Tseitlin, 1979). Recently J. Chlachula (1995) has worked on the last interglacial and last glacial stratigraphy and paleoclimate on the basis of sections in the Kurtak Archaeological Region. Ultimately all of their work was built upon the comprehensive work of Gromov (1948). The geochronology virtually all modern authorities use is based on the work of N. V. Kind (1974); it is briefly summarized in Table I. The major divisions of the last glacial period, in reverse chronological order, are the Sartan (stadial), Karginsk (interstadial), and Zyriansk or Muruktinsk (stadial), and each of these divisions has significant internal climatic oscillations. V. G. Kol'tsova (Chekha and Kol'tsova, 1992) has reconstructed moisture and temperature variations of the last glacial based on her extensive palynological work. Chekha and Kol'tsova (1992, p. 257) have observed that the middle Enisei was most intensely populated during moist and cold intervals of the late Sartan, the Karginsk, and the Zyriansk. During dry and cold intervals, however, there is no trace of human occupation except after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Also, during the last interglacial, the Kazantsev (cf. Riss/Wfirm), there is no trace

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of human settlement along the middle Enisei. This is somewhat surprising given that the climate is considered to have been arid and warm, relatively similar to today's. Much of the last interglacial soil has been reworked by frost-related phenomena during the last glacial, however, so it is possible that sites from that time have been disturbed or destroyed. During the Last Glacial Maximum (by his reckoning, 19,000 to 16,000 B.P.), Tseitlin (1979, p. 260) has concluded that severe climatic conditions made habitation im- possible throughout all of northern Asia; he finds no sites dated to this time. A similar observation on the effects of the LGM was made by A. A. Velichko (Velichko et al., 1990, pp. 81-82), with the exception that Afontova Gora was thought to have been occupied at this time. Indeed, a C-14 determination for Afontova Gora II, lower horizon of 20,900 B.E _+ 300 years (GIN 117, Libby half-life), puts it slightly earlier than the LGM as defined by Tseitlin. The sample for this determination was collected in 1962 by Tseitlin and others from a section they excavated to study the geology of the site. Tseitlin (1979, p. 136) correlated it with the lower cultural layer (layer C3) identified by Gromov. Abramova (1979a, pp. 103-104) has ques- tioned the date and prefers a date no earlier than 17,000 or 16,000 years ago (Abramova et al., 1991, p. 99). Her argument is based on the high degree of typological similarity of Afontova Gora to other Afontova sites, all of which are dated well after the LGM. When the author visited the site in 1994 and discussed the dating with the team of excavators from the Krasnoyarsk Laboratory of Archaeology and Paleogeography, it was pointed out that the correlation of Tseitlin's section with Gromov's was not well established. The two sections were some 40 m apart, and Tseitlin did not report any archaeological material in the layer he correlated with Gro- mov's C3. In sum, the LGM dating of Afontova Gora II rests on a single C-14 determination and should not be taken as verified. At present, no known sites on the Enisei are reliably dated to the LGM.

Velichko et al. (1990, pp. 80-81) have found that the highest concentration of Late Paleolithic groups throughout Eurasia during the last glacial period are found in the southern tundra-steppes and periglacial steppes, areas where considerable loess accumulated. It is precisely this kind of environment that has been reconstructed for the middle Enisei. Kol'tsova has argued, on the basis of pollen analysis, that there were patches of forest- steppe and steppe within the middle Enisei Valley throughout the last glacial (Chekha and Kol'tsova, 1992, p. 258). More specifically, Chlachula's work in the Kurtak area revealed alterations between tundra-steppe and forest-steppe from the last interglacial through the last glacial based on pedological and magnetic susceptibility analysis. "In summary, following the last interglacial, the climate in the Minusinsk basin became more pro- nounced with cold and dry conditions during the glacial stages interspersed


with moderate and more humid mid-glacial interstadials" (Chlachula, 1995, p. 80). Sections in the Kurtak region exposed by recent reservoir fluctua- tions have revealed a high-resolution record of the last interglacial and last glacial, and they may be "the most complete and continuous Late Quater- nary palaeoclimatic record known in Siberia" (Chlachula, 1995, p. 80). We can look forward to continued paleoclimatological and paleobotanical work that will establish more precisely environmental conditions in the middle Enisei during this time period.

Most of the paleoecological interpretations of Late Pleistocene human settlement systems along the middle Enisei consist of limited correlations between general climatic/vegetation categories and the presence or absence of archaeological sites. A more detailed delineation of the adaptive system is needed so that the articulations between the cultural and the natural systems can be better understood. We simply don't know, for example, the subsistence system of the inhabitants of the lower horizon at Afontova Gora II well enough to accept or reject the proposition that it would be possible for them to live through the LGM. This also points to the need for a much fuller development of archaeofaunal analysis. Most of the work to date has not gone beyond identifying remains as to species and giving an indication of relative species frequencies. One of the best summaries for Late Qua- ternary archaeofaunas of the Enisei is given in Abramova et al. (1991) in Paleolit Enise ia .

Paleohydrological investigations in central Siberia have revealed some surprises and have spurred controversy. V. Baker et al. (1993) recently published persuasive evidence of a catastrophic flood, the largest known anywhere in the world for the Late Pleistocene, which flowed northward from the Altai Mountains into the Ob' drainage. An ice-dammed lake in the upper Chuia River, a tributary of the Katun', impounded some 1000 km 3 of water. When the ice dam failed, after the LGM, it released a superflood of staggering magnitude. The peak flow was estimated to be 18 x 106 m 3 per sec. Flow depths were 400 to 500 m, with velocities reaching 45 m per sec. This appears to be higher than for the well-known previous record holder, the North American Glacial Lake Missoula, which also burst at the end of the last glacial and carved the scablands into the Columbia Plateau. Gravel wave trains were mapped at Platovo very near Gorno-Altaisk. It certainly would be worth reexamining the stratigraphy of Ulalinka, located at Gorno-Altaisk, in light of this flood. Baryshnikov (1990) also has cau- tioned that catastrophic flooding along the Katun' undoubtedly destroyed a large number of late Pleistocene and earlier Paleolithic sites.

A second paleohydrological issue concerns the extent of proglacial lakes in central Siberia and the western Siberian lowland. Grosswald (1980, p. 17), in a review of the Late Quaternary of the entire USSR, observed

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that "the ice-sheet glaciation of the Eurasian continental shelf must have impounded many north flowing rivers," including the Irtysh, the Ob', and the Enisei. The result was a giant network of lakes that connected the Enisei drainage to the Ob'. The combined area of the western Siberian lakes amounted to 1,500,000 km 2 by his estimation. Moreover, the western Siberian lakes were connected to the Aral Sea in central Asia via the Turgai Valley, where cored deposits of 60 m of lacustrine silts and clays spanning the LGM have been dated by C-14. According to Grosswald (1980, p. 18), the Caspian catchment extended all the way to Lake Baikal, and its area increased to some 10 million km 2 during the LGM. Debate on the existence and size of proglacial lakes in the Ob' and Enisei drainages continues to the present day. In a recent major publication of the Institute of Geogra- phy, Academy of Sciences of Russia (Velichko, 1993), two versions of LGM western and central Siberia are given--one with a large lake system and one without. The main problem is the lack of sufficient field data for extensive lake shorelines. It is clear that it will take many more years before the controversy is ended. In the meantime, it is provocative to speculate about Upper Paleolithic adaptations to an enormous inland Siberian Sea during the last glacial and to imagine superfloods periodically occurring as ice dams catastrophically failed.

UPPER PALEOLITHIC POPULATION AND SITE DENSITIES

Although the results are still preliminary, the relative density and distribution of sites on the Enisei should be discussed briefly. The vast majority of the -200 known Paleolithic sites are found on the middle portion of the Enisei in the forest-steppe zone that reaches from the Minusinsk depression to Krasnoyarsk. Approximately 90% of these sites are dated between 16,000 and 10,000 B.P. (Vasil'ev, 1992b, p. 351). As shown in Fig. 2, a large area of the Enisei is now flooded due to the construction of a dam at Divnogorsk. Although this dam covered a significant number of archaeological sites, it also has played an important role in the discovery of new sites. As wave action of the reservoir eroded the valley margins, and as the reservoir level was periodically adjusted for flood control and power generation, substantial exposures have been revealed at many locations. Typically, these sharply vertical sections were 5 to 10 m high and revealed Middle and Upper Pleistocene loess-loam sediments.

What is important to note here is the high concentration of sites exposed by the erosion of the reservoir. In the 20 km of reservoir shoreline in the Kurtak Archaeological Region (described more fully below and shown in Fig. 2), approximately 20 Paleolithic sites have been found in the


eroded exposures. These sites would never have been found on the surface before the reservoir was filled because they were covered by 5 to 10 m of loess-loam deposits. These sites were on the sloping valley sides of the ancient Enisei and just happened to be revealed because of the filling of the reservoir to approximately 65 m. Higher up or lower down, buried in the loess-loam mantle, there may be many more sites. Another 15 sites located by Abramova (1979a) on low terraces adjacent to the Enisei were covered by the reservoir. The picture one gains based on site frequency and paleoenvironmental reconstructions for the Late Quaternary is of a fairly productive forest-steppe environment with comparatively high population densities. It also is true, however, that the depositional environment was favorable for the preservation of sites because of the predominantly low energy aeolian and colluvial processes. Thus, given the relatively long time span of the Upper Paleolithic, the high density of sites in the Kurtak Archaeological Region could be reflective more of good site preservation than of high population density.

THE SEARCH FOR THE FIRST INHABITANTS OF SIBERIA

A considerable amount of effort has been directed toward finding early sites along the Enisei and elsewhere in Siberia. Enthusiasm for this work seems high. "Early" is, of course, a relative term. Recently there has been an enormous expansion of the Paleolithic time horizon in Siberia. V. I. Gro- mov's (1948) influential summation of the faunal and archaeological stratigraphy for the entire USSR stated that there was nothing earlier than the Upper Paleolithic in the entire Asiatic portion of the USSR. At that time Soviet archaeologists did not consider the adaptive capabilities of Ne- anderthals to be very great. S. I. Rudenko's discovery and excavation of Ust'-Kanskaia Cave in the Altai in 1954 touched off a long discussion among Soviet archaeologists concerning its antiquity and cultural affiliation. Initially Rudenko (1961) dated it to a warm phase of the last glaciation and did not assign the industry to the Mousterian. Abramova (1989, p. 156) notes that Okladnikov initially placed it in the Upper Paleolithic and held to that interpretation for several years. In her well-known survey of Paleolithic sites of the USSR, Beregovaia (1960, p. 74) also listed it as an Upper Paleolithic site. S. N. Astakhov (Anisiutkin and Ashtakhov, 1970), using the statistical approach of E Bordes, interpreted the site to be a Mousterian of Levallois facies with some intrusive Upper Paleolithic tools; within 4 or 5 years this view seems to have been accepted by the majority of Siberian archaeologists. In 1976, however, Yu. Mochanov (1976) still contended that Ust'-Kanskaia was not Mousterian.

182 Davis

Shun'kov (1990) has reanalyzed the archaeology of Ust'-Kanskaia and has confirmed Tseitlin's (1979, pp. 82-83) interpretation that there are two separate occupations in the cave. In the middle of layer 5 there is a Mous- terian industry that Tseitlin associates by sedimentological and faunal indi- cators with a warm climate. The industry in the overlying layer 4 has Upper Paleolithic characteristics and is interpreted by Tseitlin to have existed during a cold climatic period. In sum, the discovery and interpretation of Ust'- Kanskaia has been of signal importance for Siberian archaeology. It demonstrated the presence of the Mousterian in the Altai, engaged a number of specialists in its interpretation, and pointed the way to additional Middle Paleolithic and eventually Lower Paleolithic investigations.

To appreciate fully the significance of Ust'-Kanskaia, the following should be considered. In the conventional Russian division of the Paleo- lithic there are the Late Paleolithic (pozdnii paleolit) and the Ancient Pa- leolithic (drevnii paleolit). Into the latter are lumped both the Lower and the Middle Paleolithic of the standard European scheme. The Late Paleo- lithic/Ancient Paleolithic divide also is conventionally correlated with the biological transition to anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Thus, once a Mousterian site was established in Siberia, it was not such a big step to consider a much earlier presence.

Several Mousterian sites were discovered and tested in the Altai in the 1970s and 1980s, including Denisova, Strashnaia, and Okladnikov caves. Recent publications have established the Mousterian nature of these sites (e.g., Abramova et al., 1991; Derevianko et al., 1992b; Shun'kov, 1990), but more comparative and quantitative work definitely needs to be done. Par- ticularly helpful would be typological and technological analyses using the Bordes system to compare the Siberian industries with those of central Asia, Southwest Asia, and the Ukraine. Of course, there are problems with the Bordes system, but it remains a useful and well-recognized means of communication. C. Turner (1990, p. 241), on the basis of a small collection of teeth recovered from Mousterian levels of Denisova and Okladnikov caves, has observed that "the Altai lower third molars resemble those of Neanderthals more than Cro-Magnons" and that "there is a stronger hint of European genetic affiliation than an East Asian one." Thus there is a prima facie case for a radiation of Neanderthals either from Southwest Asia or along the steppe zone trending northeastward from the Black Sea to southern Siberia. V. A. Ranov (1990) has supported that view, and it provides a basis for further investigation.

The Dvuglazka Cave site was an important Middle Paleolithic discovery just to the west of the Enisei. Dvuglazka is one of the very few cave sites anywhere in the region. It is located on the Tolchen, a small tributary of the Enisei. The cave faces the south; it is about 20 m long and has 4


m of deposits. It was discovered and excavated by Z. A. Abramova (1981, 1985) beginning in 1974. The most numerous faunal remains were Equus cf. hemionus and Equus caballus. Remains of Coelodona antiquitatis, Bison priscus, and Ovis ammon also were relatively common. Significantly, mammoth and reindeer, the most abundant fauna of the Upper Paleolithic, were almost completely absent from the cave. The lithic inventory was fairly small, not more than 100 pieces. The Levallois technique was represented by triangular Levallois points and a Levallois blade core. Also present were discoidal cores, notched and denticulated flakes, and a large side scraper.

The Middle Paleolithic is not well known directly on the Enisei. Sur- face finds on the beach near the village of Kurtak have been identified by Drozdov (1992, pp. 29-30) as Mousterian with Levallois technique. Finds include Levallois points, Levallois blade cores, discoidal cores, transverse scrapers, and denticulates. At the nearby Berezhekovo site, there are a small number of artifacts that have been assigned to the Mousterian, but their stratigraphic situation is not completely clear. About 2 km farther south, at the Kamenyi Log location, there also have been several artifacts assigned to the Mousterian, but no concentration has been found in geological deposits. Thus, so far there is suggestive evidence for a Middle Pa- leolithic on the Enisei, but it is not yet well established.

If the Mousterian picture seems somewhat unclear and in need of considerably more development, the Lower Paleolithic image is even less re- solved. Over the last decade there has been a heightened interest in the Lower Paleolithic of Siberia, and there have been a number of claims of surprisingly great antiquity for early man in the north. Okladnikov (1972) was the first to assert the presence of an early Lower Paleolithic based on his fieldwork at Ulalinka, an open-air site on the outskirts of the city of Gorno-Altaisk. The site revealed, from a layer composed of reworked alluvial sediments containing boulders, gravels, and sands, a number of pebble tools selected from the large number of natural cobbles. These pebble tools have been judged to be real artifacts, but there has been considerable debate about their total number (Abramova, 1989, p. 153). Paleomagnetic data reported by Okladnikov and Pospelova (1982) are interpreted by the authors to place the site's main occupation in the Matuyama Reversed Chron, thus making the site older than 730,000 years. Tseitlin's (1979, p. 77) analysis of the stratigraphy of the site, however, suggests that the layer should be assigned to "the end of the middle, but more likely the beginning of the upper Pleistocene." As Abramova (1989, p. 153), with genuine un- derstatement, has observed, "The question of Ulalinka's age remains open." As suggested above, the cataclysmic floods of the Upper Pleistocene may be responsible for the greatly reworked sediments at Ulalinka, and perhaps, the artifacts may have come from some other source.

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The most startling claim for the early occupation of Siberia easily be- longs to Yu. Mochanov (1988, 1993; Mochanov et al., 1992). On the basis of stratigraphy, paleomagnetism, thermoluminescence, and typology, he dated Diring-Iuriakh to 3.2-1.8 million years B.P Mochanov began excavations at the site in 1982 and has now exposed a surface of more than 26,000 m 2. The site is located on the Lena River, 140 km upstream from Yakutsk at approximately 61~ latitude. The site is found in the Lena's highest terrace, which is 150-160 m above the present river. The lithic inventory numbers just over 4000 stone flakes, modified pebbles, and cobbles, 500 of which are said to be tools. Mochanov compares the industry to the Oldowan. Moreover, Mochanov (1988, p. 51) has proposed that northern and central Asia was a "hearth" for hominid evolution from a pongid an- cestor, and that the extreme environment provided stimulating adaptive context for human biocultural evolution. Mochanov credits M. Wagner, a minor German 19th-century evolutionary theorist, with the idea that "winter, cold, snow and together with them hunger" constituted the most likely context for evolutionary progress; an abundance of tropical fruits and a warm climate simply did not provide an adequate "push." Within Russia, Mochanov's dating of Diring-Iuriakh is not widely accepted, and there has been little support for it elsewhere.

Recently, M. Waters et al. (1997) reported new thermoluminescence dating for a single occupation surface within stratified deposits at Diring. The dates bracketed the occupation and indicated an age no younger than 260,000 years. Something just over a quarter of a million years is a lot less than Mochanov's estimates, but, nevertheless, it places hominids in a severe subarctic environment at a time much earlier than would be considered possible through conventional understanding of Paleolithic adaptations.

Turning now to the Enisei, there have been a number of sites reported recently that are said to date before the last glacial. Of primary importance is the Kurtak Archaeological Region, located on a 20-kin span of the left bank of the Enisei between the Trifonovka and the Izhul' Rivers, near the town of Kurtak. The erosion of the Enisei reservoir has created a nearly continuous vertical exposure of sediments in this area; since 1988 teams from Krasnoyarsk Laboratory of Archaeology and Paleogeography have been actively surveying and excavating many sites. The height of the reservoir is approximately 65 m above the former level of the Enisei, and its surface intersects the fourth river terrace. The earliest sites in the Kurtak region are Berezhekovo, Kamennyi Log I, Verkhnii Kamen', Razlog, and Ust'-Izhul' (Drozdov, 1990; Drozdov and Chekha, 1992). The latter site is located at the northern end of the Kurtak Archaeological Region and was excavated for the first time in 1994. It is perhaps the clearest evidence for


a Middle Pleistocene site. Unfortunately the reservoir waves that revealed it in 1993, destroyed it in 1994.

Ust'-Izhul' is unique in several respects. First, it has an excellent association of close to 200 artifacts, mostly quartz, quartzite, and basalt flakes, with faunal remains of at least three juvenile mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius Blum) and bison (Bison priscus). Also present were woolly rhi- noceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) and caribou (Rangifer tarandus). Second, the geological situation of the site is relatively clear in that it is below the last interglacial pedocomplex (Chlachula, 1995, p. 75). Third, portions of the mammoth skeletons were in anatomical order, and some of the bones had cut marks on them. It was not possible to make a clear interpretation of whether the fauna were hunted or scavenged. The lithic industry re- flected only butchering activities; no hunting or diagnostic tool types were present. It is indeed unfortunate that this site was destroyed by wave action before it could be fully and carefully excavated.

Of the remaining possible Lower Paleolithic sites, only Berezhekovo was excavated from undisturbed sediments; the others were all from the surface. The fauna from Berezhekovo is basically Upper Pleistocene and is not, therefore, indicative of great antiquity. A collection of 15 artifacts was excavated from layer 8a, which lies approximately 14 m below the modern surface. The artifacts consisted of flakes and cobbles with some inten- tional retouch. From such a small collection it is difficult to get an impression of the character of the industry, and Drozdov (1992, p. 23) finds that "the artifacts do not have any analogies among the known early Pa- leolithic sites of Siberia." Layer 8a is just below what is interpreted to be a reworked last interglacial soil and is thus likely to be of Middle Pleisto- cene age. More than 400 m 2 have been exposed in the excavation. Never- theless, an increased number of definite artifacts and independent dating of layer 8a will be necessary before the site can be definitely assigned to the Lower Paleolithic.

The remainder of the early sites were "found on the surface of the eroded 60-65 m high terrace remnant exposed by waves undercutting the slope" (Chlachula, 1995, p. 71). From the collections at Kamennyi Log I and Verkhnii Kamen', there are numerous pebble tools, Levallois flakes, and a variety of scrapers that typologically signal the possibility of a Lower Paleolithic, but until more finds are made in independently dated in situ deposits, these sites cannot be taken as definitive evidence for a Lower Paleolithic.

In southernmost Tuva, Astakhov (1990) discovered, in 1988, a new lo- cality 3 km south of the settlement of Torgalyk. The site is located south of the Tannu Ola Mountains and is within 25 km of the giant Uvs Nuur Lake in Mongolia. The Torgalyk site was found on the surface of an alluvial

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fan, and, according to Astakhov (1990, p. 40), the depositional context of the site is not clear. Astakhov believes that the artifacts, numbering some 200 specimens, most likely belong to the Acheulean because of seven bifaces found in the collection. He is properly cautious about the early dating of the finds, but he does refer to a possible genetic connection via Mongolia with Madras in southern India (Astakhov, 1990, p. 43).

In sum, there is new but somewhat tentative evidence for human occupation of the Enisei before the last interglacial. The Ust'-Izhul' site is the clearest trace of Middle Pleistocene activity. The Altai has not revealed much that is said to be before the last interglacial, although the bifacial handaxes recently discovered in the Kuznetsk Basin at the site of Mok- hovo-II (Derevianko et al., 1992c) may be a harbinger of discoveries to come. Medvedev et al. (1990) have reported pre-last interglacial pebble tools on upper Angara terraces of the Briatsk reservoir at the Igetei I lo- cality, but their dating remains uncertain.

THE PROBLEM OF CONTINUITY AND ASSEMBLAGE VARIABILITY

One of the research questions that has dogged Siberian archaeologists from the beginning is how time transgressive are various artifact types and techniques? Early investigators (e.g., I. T. Savenkov, the discoverer of Afon- tova Gora in Krasnoyarsk in 1883) tended to see the Upper Paleolithic archaeological record of Siberia as a combination of earlier Mousterian technologies with later elements from the European Upper Paleolithic. In the 1920s, G. Merhart (1923, p. 53), after examining many of the Upper Paleolithic sites in the neighborhood of Krasnoyarsk, particularly Afontova Gora, concluded that "a considerable portion of the Yenisei palaeolithic for us find their parallel in the typical Mousterian and the transition to the Aurignacian of Europe." Archaic pebble tools were believed to have hung on much longer than in other parts of the Old World, well into the Holocene. A. P. Okladnikov (1966) supported the Movius dichotomy of separated East Asian chopper-chopping tool and western core biface tra- ditions, but he also extended the concept into the Upper Paleolithic of Asia (Mochanov, 1976, p. 549). This view of long-standing cultural persist- ence is also evident in Chard (1974) and Michael (1984). Michael (1984, p. 25) observed that Ust'-Kanskaia's

archaic forms o f . . . artifacts and the manufacturing techniques are reminiscent of the Mousterian techniques of western Europe. This is not to say that we are dealing with a site contemporaneous with the Mousterian of western Europe, for the survival of archaic forms and techniques is generally characteristic of the Paleolithic of Siberia.


There is a tendency for those who recognize a continuity of "archaic" traits to view the appearance of the "progressive" Upper Paleolithic suite of technologies as the result of diffusion. For example, A. P Okladnikov held that many of the Siberian Upper Paleolithic assemblages from sites such as Mal'ta and Buret' had European origins (Okladnikov and Abra- mova, 1974). Mochanov (1976, pp. 548-549) has noted that Okladnikov's position had a clear basis in the work of Merhart, who also looked to the west for Siberian Upper Paleolithic origins.

A countervailing view begins with Zamiatnin (1951), who took the position that the Siberian Paleolithic was the clearest example of an autono- mous and independent cultural development and argued against migrationist points of view. G. P. Sosnovskii, in the 1930s, "explained the presence of 'archaic' forms on the basis of their economic role which they played" and that the appearance of forests at the end of the Pleistocene led to the transformation of the large pebble tools into axlike tools (Abra- mova, 1989, p. 146). S. A. Vasil'ev (1992a) follows in the tradition of Zamiatnin, in that he identifies northern Asia as a historical-cultural zone wherein there is local development of the Late Paleolithic from the Ancient Paleolithic. He also points out that the Siberian Late Paleolithic is not unique in preserving Ancient Paleolithic elements. As examples he refers to Southeast Asia, Australia, and Equatorial Africa as regions exhibiting archaic traits during Late Paleolithic times. Vasil'ev's view is widespread among Russian archaeologists. Migrationist explanations for cultural variability and change were strongly downplayed during the Soviet era; there is still an inclination to find autochthonous sequences.

Listvenka, a deeply stratified, open-air site on the Enisei just upstream from the dam at Divnogorsk, has recently provided important data bearing on Upper Paleolithic assemblage variability. Excavation of the site began in the early 1980s and has continued up to the present, under the direction of E. V. Akimova of the Krasnoyarsk Laboratory of Archaeology and Pa- leogeography. In all, Akimova (1993) identified some 19 cultural layers that span a time interval from approximately 16,000 to 13,000 B.P based on a series of C-14 determinations. The site has excellent faunal preservation, abundant lithics, hearths, and bone tools. Akimova (1992) identified the top layers as belonging to the Afontova culture, the middle layers to the Kokorevo culture, and the bottom layers, once more, to Afontova culture. No other site on the Enisei is known to have both of these assemblages. It has been debated for some time whether the Afontovo and Kokorevo cultures, named after their middle Enisei type sites by Z. A. Abramova (1979a, b), reflect parallel cultural groups occupying the Enisei at the end of the Pleistocene or whether they might be functional variants of the same culture. Based on her work at Listvenka, Akimova concluded that Afontovo

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and Kokorevo are two parallel cultures that persisted in the middle Enisei for several thousand years, even though they have heavily overlapping site distributions. Cultural distinctness, Akimova argued, is manifested by characteristic primary flaking modes (Kokorevo based on prismatic-blade production and Afontovo based on flake production). There also were significant differences in the utilization of raw materials. She found no basis in faunal, climatic, seasonal, or activity variation to explain the artifact differences between the Afontovo and Kokorevo cultures. Nevertheless, there are numerous resemblances between the assemblages; the bone tool industries, for example, are remarkably similar, and a number of stone tool types are common to both. It would be too much to say that the problem of Upper Paleolithic variability has been solved by Akimova's work, but she has made a significant contribution through her carefully controlled excavation and analysis. No doubt this issue will remain for many years to come.

SUMMARY AND PROSPECTS

Paleolithic archaeologists can look to southern Siberia and the Enisei to find evidence for a number of significant landmarks in human biocultural evolution. The Enisei has provided a number of important sites, beginning with the Lower Paleolithic, that provide a much broader view of the Pa- leolithic world. Current research is centered on several problems, and they require considerably more attention.

First, the question of when the first inhabitants of Siberia appeared is, and will continue to be, a major issue. Conventional wisdom suggests that human adaptation to the Siberian northern forest-steppes and the taiga, in either glacial or interglacial periods, required clothing, shelter, the controlled use of fire, storage, complex hunting equipment, and probably language. The duster of these adaptations is not generally recognized in the archaeological record until at least the Middle Paleolithic; thus Lower Paleolithic populations would not be anticipated to be found so far north. If it can be shown, however, that pre-Riss/Wtirm populations inhabited the Enisei (or sites even farther north, like Diring on the Lena River), it would mean that Lower Paleolithic peoples had reached a level of adaptive com- petence much greater than had previously been observed. At the moment, the best evidence for a Middle Pleistocene site on the Enisei is Ust'-Izhul', but additional sites in stratigraphic context are needed.

Second, the problem of time-transgressive technologies requires more attention. Readers trained in North American archaeology are familiar with the "belated" and "marginal" archaeological culture concepts of Willey and Phillips (1958, p. 74). As discussed above, Siberia has long been considered


the home of belated or marginal cultures, because several Upper Paleolithic industries have what are described as "archaic" pebble tools and large scrapers (the skreblo). Recent early dating for the Upper Paleolithic of 29,400 B.P. + 400 years at the lower layer of Kashtanka on the Enisei (Bokarev and Martynovich, 1992), Kara-Bom in the Altai, at 43,200 B.P. + 1500 years, and Malaia Syia just west of the Enisei, at 34,420 B.P. + 360 years, however, suggest quite another picture. Instead of being a frigid backwater, central Siberia is showing evidence of being as close as any region outside of Africa to the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition. None- theless, pebble tool and large scraper technologies do hang on well into the Holocene. Hence, Zamiatnin's and Vasil'ev's conception of a north Asian historical-cultural zone cannot be easily dismissed, nor can Abra- mova's idea of a southern Siberian late Paleolithic cultural oblast.

On the issue of explaining lithic variation in late Pleistocene assemblages, much more work needs to be done. First, a clear picture of the variation for any given time period must be presented. To my mind this can most easily be accomplished by the adoption of a standardized typology with associated technological indices. It is not entirely clear to me why such typologies were never developed during the Soviet period, although for quite a while an overly typological approach was tainted by its association with Western "bourgeois" archaeology. Based on my personal but unsys- tematic observation, there is a tendency to make overly complex and idi- osyncratic classifications and attribute analyses. These classifications are hard to adopt and are cumbersome to utilize. They do not, therefore, come into general use. There is no simple solution to this problem, and of course, Russian archaeologists are only one group among many who face this issue. The solution will come only when there is general agreement among the archaeological community as to what the goals of classification are and how classification fits into high-level theory.

The last decade has seen great advances in Pleistocene geology and paleoclimatology. The Enisei has benefited from a period of solid and productive stratigraphic work; in particular, the river terrace system is well understood for the middle course of the river. More challenges must be met in the future. The effects of Pleistocene superflooding and the extent of proglacial lakes, discussed above, are clear examples. Hydrological systems may have had a profound influence on both the movements of Pa- leolithic populations and, of course, on the preservation of their remains. Continued and expanded palynological investigation will be extremely important for our understanding of Uppe r Pleistocene adaptations in Siberia. Faunal studies play a role here, too, and they have an enormously important part in the understanding of human subsistence behavior.

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Thus the Paleolithic archaeology of the Enisei and southern Siberia has great potential and should play a more significant role in world archaeology. The collapse of the Soviet government brought severe economic hardship to archaeological research institutes in Siberia and elsewhere. Funding from traditional sources for expeditions, equipment, personnel, training of new students, and publication has been dramatically curtailed. It will take some time for the archaeological infrastructure to be restructured and developed to levels found in other parts of the world. It is of the utmost importance now to support those Russian institutes that carry on archaeological research and will train the next generation of archaeologists.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Nikolai I. Drozdov, head of the Archaeological Labo- ratory of Archaeology and Paleogeography, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, for introducing me to Siberian archaeology, for giving me great encouragement, and for hosting me on his expeditions on the middle Enisei in 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1994. I also wish to thank Bryn Mawr College for supporting my travel and expenses to Siberia through its Faculty Research Grant program. Finally, I wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers who thoroughly reviewed the manuscript and offered many suggestions and corrections.

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Documents

Paleolithic of the Yenisey (1998)