Neolithic of the Northeast Asia and the Arctic Small Tool Tradition of the North America

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Neolithic of the Northeast Asia and the Arctic Small Tool Tradition of the North America

S.B. Slobodin

Abstract

The origins of several northern cultures -- Native peoples of the Arctic and Subarctic (Inuits, Chukchi, Koryaks, Aleuts) are associated by most researchers with the development and spread of Neolithic cultures in Northeast Asia. These Neolithic cultures later gave rise to the Arctic Small Tool Tradition (ASTt) in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Neolithic cultures of Arctic and Subarctic Northeast Siberia (Yakutia, Chukotka and Kolyma regions) began their development during Mid-Holocene, approximately 6500-5500 years ago.

Their basis are the Neolithic cultures of the Baikal Lake region, but as they formed they gained a unique character. Thus, in Yakutia, we can distinguish Syalakh, Belkachi, and Ymiyakhakh cultures, which later developed into the Neolithic cultures of Kolyma and Chukotka (Upper Kolyma, Ust-Belskaya, and Northern Chukotka). During the Neolithic, microblade technology continues to be used, and new shapes of bifacially flaked tools appear, which find analogies in the ASTt toolkits of the Arctic and Subarctic Zone of North America. In the Kolyma and Chukotka Neolithic complexes and in the ASTt complex in Alaska and Canada we find common tool types: small triangular points, rounded dorsally and ventrally retouched scrapers, beak-shaped combined tools, angular and multifaceted burins, end and side inset blades, gravers and adze with partially polished blades etc. Common traits of these cultures (traditions) formed, it appears, not only due to the direct spread of the Neolithic technologies and people into Alaska, but also due to the commonalities in the environmental and climatic zones of the Arctic and Subarctic which housed these cultures from the beginning of the second half of the Holocene.

Keywords: Neolithic, Northeast Asia, Arctic Small Tools tradition, Alaska, Canada, Greenland.

Аннотация

Неолит Северо-Востока Азии и традиция «Арктик Смол Тул» Северной Америки

ethnic arctic neolithic

С. Б. Слободин - канд. ист. наук, вед. науч. сотр., Северо-Восточный комплексный научно-исследовательский институт ДВО РАН, Российская Федерация

Происхождение ряда северных этносов -- коренных жителей Арктики и Субарктики (эскимосов, чукчей, коряков, инуитов, алеутов) большинство исследователей ассоциируют с развитием и распространением на Северо-Востоке Азии неолитических культур, которые впоследствии стали основой формирования арктической традиции мелких орудий (Arctic Small Tool Tradition, ASTt) на Аляске, в Канаде и Гренландии. Свое развитие неолитические культуры арктических и субарктических районов Северо-Восточной Сибири -- Якутии, Чукотки и Колымы получили с середины голоцена, примерно 6500-5500 лет назад.

Основой их формирования стали прибайкальские и забайкальские неолитические культуры, но в процессе формирования они обрели характерный только для них облик. Это позволило выделить в Якутии сыалахскую, бель-качинскую и ымыяхтахскую культуры, продолжением которых стали неолитические культуры Колымы и Чукотки (верхнеколымская, усть-бельская и северочукотская), обладающие рядом специфических черт. В неолите микропластинчатая технология на Северо-Востоке Азии сохраняется, ее дополняют характерные формы орудий с двусторонней обработкой, аналогии которым выявляются в орудийных комплексах традиции ASTt в арктической и субарктической зонах Северной Америки. Характерной чертой неолитических культур Якутии является керамика. На Колыме и Чукотке ее присутствие в раннем и среднем неолите незначительно. Она отсутствует на большинстве стоянок этих регионов, а также и на Аляске в комплексах ASTt. В неолитических комплексах на Колыме и Чукотке и в материалах комплекса Денби на Аляске, первого открытого комплекса ASTt в Арктике (Denbigh Flint complex) Аляски, помимо микропластинок отмечаются такие сходные типы орудий, как мелкие треугольные наконечники, округлые в плане ретушированные скребки; клювовидные комбинированные орудия; угловые и многофасеточные резцы, концевые и боковые вкладыши, резцы, тесла с частично шлифованным лезвием и др. Общие черты этих культур (традиций) сформировались, очевидно, не только вследствие прямого распространения на Аляску неолитических технологий и их носителей, но и под влиянием особенностей природно-климатических зон Арктики и Субарктики, в которых они существовали со второй половины голоцена.

Ключевые слова: неолит, Северо-Восток Азии, Аляска, Канада, Гренландия, арктическая традиция мелких орудий.

Introduction

Researchers have established that people started inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic of Northeast Asia from the early stages of the Late Paleolithic, from the end of the Karga epoch. This process continued, with different levels of intensity, during the entire Sartan cooling .

At the end of the Sartan epoch, while moving into the Bering land bridge that formed between Eurasia and North America as a result of global climatic changes , people also reached North America, where they first inhabited ice-free Arctic and Subarctic regions of Alaska and Yukon Territory (Northwest Canada) .

However, before the Holocene warming, this process was irregular, periodic, and punctuated by long pauses due to climatic catastrophes; it is characterized by frequent replacement of one culture with another, quite dissimilar: the Yanskaya, Dyuktai, Early Ushki, Mesa, Nenana, Sluiceway, Paleoarctic.

This process is also associated with the time period, still little understood, during which people inhabited the areas of North America past the icesheets, in the second half of Sartan . Common features of the cultural traditions of Northeast Asia and the Arctic and Subarctic North America, which formed as early as the Paleolithic, were retained during the later time periods . During the early Holocene, the exploration of the Arctic and Subarctic was activated and somewhat stabilized for a few thousands of years, as seen in the Sumnagin culture of Northeast Asia and the Late Tundra tradition in Alaska, which adapted the prismatic microblade technology from the Sumnagin culture .

This is the foundation for the development of the Northern Archaic culture in Alaska, around 7000 years ago. This culture, characterized by large side-notched points and subprismatic cores, might have represented inhabitants from the upper Yukon River moving into Alaska; part of this population used microblade technologies, but the rest did not .

However, the most active exploration of the Arctic, especially Arctic Alaska and Canada began only in the mid-Holocene at the end of the Atlantic period, when Neolithic traditions from Subarctic Northeast Asia spread into those regions, continuing the unity of the historical development of Beringia's post-glacial period. They brought about a fundamental change in the character of the cultures during the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, similar to the change that occurred at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, when major catastrophic environmental changes were taking place.

Since the mid-Holocene (approximately 6000-5000 years ago) and until the beginning of the current era, this unity was reflected in the development of Neolithic cultures in Northeast Asia, and the Arctic Small Tool tradition in Alaska and Arctic Canada. During this time, elements started forming in Northeast Asia, which later appeared in ASTt -- small bifacial leaf-shaped points, scrapers, burins, end blades and side blades, ribbon-like.

Fig.l. Geographic distribution of early and mid-Neolithic sites of Northeast Asia (1-41): 1 -- Belkachi; 2 -- Gromatukha; 3 -- Sumnagin; 4 -- Dzhikimda; 5 -- Kangalas; 6 -- Siktyah; 7 -- Olenek; 8 -- Tuoi-Haya; 9 -- Ust'-Chirkuo; 10 -- Khatanga; 11 -- Maimeche; 12 -- Pyasina; 13 -- Buolumana- Taasa, Belaya Gora; 14 -- Ui (Locality 2); 15 -- Mamontai I, Mamontai I-VI, Perevalnaya XI and Pridorojnaya site; 16 -- Agrobaza IV; 17 -- Nemichan; 18 -- Migai; 19 -- Bauman; 20 -- Elikchan Lake; 21 -- Khurendzha II, III, V, VI, and VIII, Neel-Ustye, Neel II and IV, Urtychukll, III, IX, andX; 22 -- Ola I; 23 -- Oksa V, Vesyolaya VII, Dukcha, Alevina, and Kolchakovskaya (Tauy Bay); 24 -- Kukhtuy I and III; 25 -- Malkachan 1-4 and Iretskaya site; 26 -- Gizhiga; 27 -- Ust-Tenkeli; 28 -- Burlakich; 29 -- Kamenka I, Labuya III, Kigilyakh I, III, IV, and VI; 30 -- Pomazkino II--IV; 31 -- Panteleyikha I, II, IV, Slezovka, Kamenniy Cape, Frolovskaya IV, Stadukhinskaya I, Rodinka I, II, and V; 32 -- Cape Sinitsina; 33 -- Bolshoy Nuteneut II; 34 -- Yagodnaya site; 35 -- Tytyf; 36 -- Ust-Beliy, Kameshki; 37 -- Chikayevo site; 38 -- Koolen' III (low level); 39 -- Getlyanen I; 40 -- Naulyngytgyn I; 41 -- Unenen.

ASTt sites of Alaska (1-19), Pre-Dorset, Independence I and Saqqaq of Canada and Greenland (20-51): 1 -- Iyatayet; 2 -- Kuzitrin Lake at Seward Peninsula; 3 -- Cape Espenberg; 4 -- Cape Krusenstern; 5 -- Onion Portage; 6 -- Matcharak Lake; 7 -- Punyik Point; 8 -- Croxton; 9 -- Kurupa Lake; 10 -- Imaigenik; 11 -- Mosquito Lake; 12 -- Walakpa; 13 -- Coffin (Prudhoe Bay); 14 -- Sussitna; 15 -- SEL-033 (Chugachik Island); 16 -- Brooks River; 17 -- Ugashik Narrows; 18 -- Sapsuc River; 19 -- Margaret Bay; 20 -- Engigstciak; 21 -- Crane (ObRv-1); 22 -- Dismal Lake; 23 -- Bloody Falls; 24 -- ObPj-6; 25 -- Buchanan, Wellington Bay; 26 -- Umingmak; 27 -- Bettison Point; 28 -- Stanwell Fletcher Lake; 29 -- Port Refuge; 30 -- Rocky Point; 31 -- Gneiss, Far Site, Icy Bay, and Hind sites; 32 -- Cape Storm; 33 -- Kettle Lake; 34 -- Sojourn; 35 -- Lake View, Camp View, and Skraeling sites; 36 -- Kapuivik and Jens Munk sites; 37 -- Kaleruserk-Parry Hill; 38 -- Mittimatalik; 39 -- LdFa-1; 40 -- Mosquito Ridge; 41 -- Shaymarc; 42 -- Annawak; 43 -- Closure; 44 -- Saglek Bay; 45 -- Tuapassuit; 46 -- Nipisate site; 47 -- Tupersui; 48 -- Qeqertasussuk 12, 13, and 14, Saqqaq, Sermermiut, and Niivertussannguaq sites; 49 -- Qajaa; 50 -- Nuussuaq; 51 -- Pearylandville, Midternaes, and Deltaterrasserne sites (map by S.Slobodin) retouch. Canadian Arctic and Greenland could not have been inhabited before 5000 years ago due to severe paleographic conditions of the area .

Northeast Asian Neolithic

The development of the Neolithic Northeast Asian cultures took place parallel to the cultural processes of the nearby territories.

Powerful cultural impulses coming from large cultural centers, such as the Baikal Region, Transbaikalia, and the Amur region, towards Northeast Asia through Yakutia, gave rise to the fundamental new technological, cultural and, it seems, ethnic elements which eventually determined the changes of cultural traditions in Northeast Asia and led to the formation of unique northern ethic groups (Fig. 1).

Approximately 5000-6000 years ago, during the early and middle Neolithic of Northeast Asia (Kolyma and Chukotka) and Taymyr Peninsula, cultural traditions from Yakutia and the Far East shaped the formation of new cultures, whose toolkit includes microblades, sometimes retouched along one or both edges; conical, prismatic and flattened microblade cores; small flat lanceolate and triangular arrow points; dihedral, angle and mul-tifaceted burins; beak-like burin spalls; small end and side scrapers on flakes and blades; various side blades; awls; and rarely, pottery and adzes with polished edges .

Early Neolithic

At this point, the early Neolithic in Kolyma and Chukotka are poorly studied. Its origins are associated with the spread of the Yakutian Syalakh culture from the Lena River valley around 6000 years ago. Only a few sites dating to that period are known, which probably reflects the complicated environmental and cultural changes taking place in Northeast Asia at the time. Nevertheless, the available material shows that during the early Neolithic people spread to Kolyma and Chukotka all the way to the Bering Strait.

Early Neolithic materials include small bipointed end blades, points made on flakes and blade-like flakes, oval bifacial knives, multifaceted burins, microblade inserts, ground knives, rectangular ground adzes, corner burins on blades, awls, endscrapers, beak-like burin spalls, bone harpoon tips, and net-stamp pottery .

In the Upper Kolyma, early Neolithic materials were discovered at the Mamontai I site (Mamontai Lake in the Chersky Range), where a dwelling and an activity area (3.54 m in diameter), surrounded by stones, were examined. The tools here include blades, scrapers on blade-like flakes, prismatic cores, retouched microblades, lanceolate projectile points, knives with an asymmetric base, and a multifaceted burin.

In West Chukotka, evidence of the early Neolithic can be seen at Bolshoy Nuteneut II (locale 3), dated to 6000 -- 5000 years ago. Researchers found an oval above-ground dwelling (3.5 m in diameter), like a tent, with stones around the perimeter (to hold down the skins) and a hearth with a bone accumulation in the center. Around the hearth, there are fragments of net-marked pottery, prismatic cores, microblades, rectangular (in shape and cross-section) ground adze, endscrapers, and asymmetrical lanceolate bifaces .

In Central Chukotka, along the Anadyr River, middle Neolithic materials (obsidian microblades, a prismatic core, adzes, scrapers, inserts, projectiles, and net-marked ceramics) were found “among the earliest remains of the Ust'-Belaia site at Burial Mound 14 and outside the burial complexes of Burial Mound 15” dated to 3000 years BC .

On the Chukotka Peninsula, near the Bering Strait, early Neolithic sites include Koolen' III (lowest level), Getlyanen I and Naulyngytgyn I, located on the river and lake shores . The toolkit included conical and prismatic cores, retouched microblades, bifa-cially flaked knives and projectile points, and endscrapers on flakes; ceramics were absent. Radiocarbon date of 5700 ± 300 BP (MAG-717) was obtained from the Koolen' III site. The small number of sites does not allow, for now, to determine the exact character and timing of the early Neolithic cultures in Central and East Chukotka, but they were undoubtedly present.

Judging from the small number of sites, this was not the most plentiful period for Northeast Asia, but the early Neolithic population explored the continental regions of Kolyma and reached the Chukotka Peninsula and the Bering Strait. The archaeological record shows that these were small groups of nomadic reindeer (tundra) and moose (taiga) hunters with a compact toolkit of relatively small implements, which included microblade cores, miroblades, composite bone tools, arrow and spear points, knives, scrapers, and burins. They used clay pottery to prepare and store food. Their sites were located along the shores of large rivers and lakes with fish, indicating that they were fishers in addition to hunting. They lived in light portable dwellings, similar to tents, covered with animal skins held down by stones.

Middle Neolithic

The middle Neolithic sites in Northeast Asia and Taymyr Peninsula, are more common than the early Neolithic sites, but are distributed unevenly. They are associated with the formation of the Belkachi culture in Yakutia at the end of the 4th millennium BC. This process, compared to the early Neolithic, was more “explosive” in nature; the accumulated energy allowed the culture to cross the Bering Strait and reach Alaska. The same period in Yakutia is characterized by several fundamental single-component complexes with tools, ceramics, and radiocarbon dates . Researchers suggest that middle Neolithic populations reached Northern Far East and Taymyr Peninsula around the 3d millennium BC (Fig. 1).

Middle Neolithic materials from the sites in the Lena River Valley are identified by the presence of cord-ornament ceramics and such characteristic stone tool types as conical and prismatic cores, microblades, bifacially worked flat sub-triangular arrow points with an extended base tip, bipointed end blades, beak-like tools, ground stepped adzes, axes with “ears" endscrapers on flakes and blades, multifaceted burins, burin spalls, leafshaped biface knives, corner burins on flakes and blades, and retouched blade insets. The primary cleavage technique continued to rely on conical and prismatic cores and blades removed from them.

Researchers have also identified specific implements characteristic of the Middle Neolithic in the Kolyma region and Chukotka: stemmed points on blade-like flakes, rhomboid bifacial points, burins on blades, pendant disks, and others .

There are several Middle Neolithic sites (Buolumana-Taasa and Belaya Gora) on the lower Indigirka, east of the Verkhoyanskiy Range, contain fragments of cord-ornament ceramic, triangular points with a pointed base, and beak-like implements .

Further east, in the Lower and Middle Kolyma there are sites (Kamenka I; Labuya III; Kigilyakh I, III, IV, VI; Pomazkino II-IV, Panteleyikha I, II, IV, Slezovka, Kamenniy Cape, Frolovskaya IV, Stadukhinskaya I, Rodinka I, II, V, etc.) with cord ceramics and microblades, rectangular flat adzes, rhomboid points, retouched microblade insets, triangular (sometimes with an asymmetrical pointed base) and bipointed end blades, stemmed endscrapers and knives on blades, angle burins on microblades, multifaceted burins on flakes, etc.

The burial at the Rodinka II site, dated to 3600 ± 60 (GIN-5594), is also classified as Belkachi culture . The burial goods, according to Kistenev, include such characteristically Belkachi tools, as bipointed end blades, ground adzes with a convex long-axis profile, microblades, and bone artifacts with designs similar to the ornaments on the Belkachi ceramics. Moving towards the Upper Kolyma region, it is possible to confirm the presence of the Middle Neolithic populations in the Chersky Range, on the alpine lakes Ui and Mamontai, at the sites Mamontai I-VI, Perevalnaya XI, Pridorojnaya, Ui (L. 2) . Technologically and typologically, ground adzes, rectangular in cross-section, awl and burins (dihedral and angle) on microblades, a multifaceted burin, a conical core, a pendant, and triangular points with a pointed stem are classified as Middle Neolithic (Figs 2, 3).

The Pridorojnaya site's cultural level yielded a C-14 date of 5300 ± 150 (Le-3897), corresponding to the earliest Middle Neolithic of this region and confirming the typological analogies to the Yakutia artifacts. Also, a Middle Neolithic complex is represented by single-component sites along the Kolyma River. At Agrobaza IV, located on a tall river terrace, material is found in situ in an area around 50 m2, approximately 1 m deep, in a sandy deposit under the cultural level dating to the Early Metal period. Around a hearth, formed with small cob-

Fig. 2. Stone tools assemblage of the Middle Neolithic Kolyma sites (1-18):

1-6, 8-11 -- points; 7, 14 -- side inserts; 12, 17 -- microblade cores; 15, 16 -- gravers; 13, 18 -- burins (created by S. Slobodin)

bles, there were fragments of corded ceramics, prismatic microblade cores, microblades and small stone tools. The toolkit included small rhomboid arrow points, bipointed end blades (some with a rounded base); multifaceted and angle burins on blades; endscrapers on microblades and flakes; knives and small insets on retouched microblades; beak-like multi-purpose tools (burin-scrapers) and a net weight. The tools are 3-3.5 cm long.

Fig. 3. Stone tools assemblage of the Middle Neolithic Kolyma sites (1-16):

1 -- biface; 2, 6 -- scrapers; 3 -- corner burin; 4, 5 -- gravers; 7-13 -- microblades; 14, 16 -- microblade cores; 15 -- multifaceted burin (created by S. Slobodin)

Charcoal from the hearth was AMS dated to 4790 ± 50 (Beta-140689). The lack of any complex dwelling structures indicates that the Neolithic population was using light aboveground tents with a wooden pole frame and a skin covering, similar to the ones used by the local Even reindeer hunters to this day.

This complex is complemented by tools from the sites Nemichan and Migai, such as small leaf-shaped and triangular arrow points (some are notched and have a pointed stem); endscrapers on flakes with dorsal retouch, and on a blade with an angled working edge; conical and prismatic cores, dihedral, angle and multifaceted burins, burins on microblades, bifacially retouched oval, a ground/polished implement (see Figs 1, 2).

The raw materials include local chert, quartz crystal, and obsidian from Chukotka. Decorations consist of round flat disks-pendants. A charred bone from Migai was dated to 4470 ± 25 and 4190 ± 30 (UGAMS 20282-83).

The archaeological record of the Okhotsk-Kolyma uplands alpine tundra and woodlands indicates that the area was actively inhabited . The geographic conditions of the uplands determined the characteristics of the deep-rooted hunting specialization of the tribes living here. Reindeer were the main prey species. Since there were no large rivers that would be obstacles for migrating reindeer herds, a different hunting technique developed here compared to that practiced by the Chukotka and Yakutia Neolithic hunters, who would dispatch reindeer at river crossings or moose in taiga .

Despite the major role played by hunting, it does not appear to have been the only subsistence activity of the Neolithic population of Okhotsk-Kolyma uplands. Shallow headwaters of the Okhotsk watershed rivers, where chum and pink salmon migrate up to spawn, were more convenient places to fish than the river mouths since it was easier to dam the shallow stream and fish with a leister or create traps, as the local population does to this day.

The collections from sites of this region (Khurendzha-II, III, V, VI, VIII, Neel-Ustye, Kheta (upper level), Neel II, IV, Urtychuk II, III, IX, X, Elikchan Lake, and Burlakich) include prismatic, conical, and flattened cores; microblades, microblade insets retouched along one or both edges; awls on microblades and flakes; arrow points -- stemmed on trilateral blade and flat triangular with straight and notched base, bifacially flaked oval and slightly pointed or subrectangular knives; large bifacial knives and spear points, truncated-lanceolate in shape; end and side scrapers of flakes, partially or fully retouched; multifaceted, dihedral burins on blades with retouched edges, and angle burins on blades; burins on microblades, beak-like burins on flakes; and a small polished adze.

Technologically and typologically, the sites in Okhotsk-Kolyma Uplands share many common traits with the Middle Neolithic cultures of Yakutia and Chukotka, but also exhibit significant originality in the types of implements. A striking feature here is the presence of flat oval ground pendants with a hole and disks up to 4 cm in diameter with a hole in the center made from white agalmatolite.

The timing of existence of the Khurendzha complex on the Okhotsk-Kolyma uplands is dated with assays from Khurendzha VIII -- 5210 ± 170 (LE-3901), Khurendzha V -- 4530 ± 150 (MAG-1261), and Neel-Ustye -- 4150 ± 120 (LE-3988), 4220 ± 100 (LE-4653), 4880 ± 170 (LE-4654), 4970 ± 70 (Beta-140692). Thus, the Khurendzha complex had been developing from the end of the 4th to the end of the 3rd millennium BC, during the Middle Neolithic of Yakutia and Chukotka, and as such could very well have been an ASTt ancestor.

One more representative complex of chert tools, including microblades, primary spalls, beak-like burin spalls, multifaceted burins and cores, similar to the ASTt ones, was found in the Upper Kolyma region, at the Ust-Tenkeli site. The cores have one platform; the face of the core, from which microblades were removed, is located on one of the wide surfaces. The platform is tilted back significantly. The cores are 2.4 to 3.1 cm tall, 1.1 to

2 cm wide, 0.6 to 1.4 cm thick. One of the cores is made of quartz crystal. The complex may have been older that the Middle Neolithic, but similarities between it and ASTt in the core manufacturing technique are obvious.

In the middle Neolithic of the Northern Okhotsk Sea coast we see a more widespread, compared to the Early Holocene , entry of the hunters from the interior into the coastal areas of the Okhotsk Sea. This evidence is so far scarce.

A collection of microblades and triangular points was obtained from Kukhtuy I and III sites at the mouth of the Kukhtuy River on the Okhotsk coast . Excavations at Kukhtuy III exposed a Neolithic level, containing charcoal C14 dated to 4700 ± 100 (Le-995). This indicates the earliest evidence of a maritime adaptation in the Neolithic populations of the Okhotsk Sea coast.

Other evidence of continental tribes' entry onto the Northern Okhotsk Sea coast is known from the sites Malkachan 1-4, Iretskaya (Yama Bay coast in the Shelikhov Gulf), Oksa V, Vesyolaya VII, Dukcha, Alevina, Kolchakovskaya (Tauy Bay) and Gizhiga . There, researchers have found microblades, prismatic microcores, dihedral and multifaceted burins, small triangular points, and a preform of a rectangular in cross-section adze. These artifacts have much in common with the Middle Neolithic tools from the Okhotsk-Kolyma Uplands.

The route of the continental hunters towards the Okhotsk Sea coast was along river valleys, as exemplified by the site Ola I, located 50 km away from the coast, in the Ola River valley. The site, located on a massive remnant of the bedrock at the mouth of a large tributary, with a great view of a large portion of the valley floor, contained microblades (some of them retouched along the edges) and small slightly notched triangular points .

Neolithic materials from the Okhotsk-Kolyma highlands and the continental Priokhote region are important in the discussion of the origins of maritime cultures of the Northern Priokhote. Without doubt, continental tribes, which reached the Okhotsk coast in antiquity and explored the coastal ecosystems, played an important role in this process. Since the end of the first millennium BC in the Northern Priokhote region, the non-microblade Tokareva maritime culture had formed. The interaction between continental cultures with the developing maritime cultures in Priokhote and Chukotka remains unclear due to the scarcity of Neolithic sites in coastal areas.

The Middle Neolithic of the Kolyma region is characterized by the emergence of new tools, but at the same time many elements of the Early Neolithic material culture were preserved. Obtaining microblades from prismatic cores remained a widely used technique; scrapers, burins and blade inserts continued to be used, but their percentage in the toolkit gradually decreases to 10-11% of all finds. The stability of the types in the stone toolkit indicates that the subsistence style of the ancient Kolyma inhabitants did not differ significantly from the style shaped by the new environmental conditions in the Early Neolithic. Hunting remained the main subsistence activity of the population, as evidenced by the arrow points and environmental conditions of the sites, with a smaller role played by fishing and small animal trapping. According to ethnographic data, the native people from Kolyma practiced hare hunting on a great scale (more than 12,000 animals per winter) in the recent past .

During this time, the Kolyma inhabitants had developed regional networks for raw material trading, as evidenced by their use of obsidian from Krasnoye Lake (Chukotka) .

In West Chukotka, Middle Neolithic material found at Yagodnaya site and Cape Sinitsina on Malyi Anui River included retouched microblades, stemmed points on microblades, bifacially flaked lanceolate projectile points, dihedral and multifaceted burins, scrapers, and cord ceramics . At the Yagodnaya site, artifacts were accompanied by small fragments of reindeer bone.

The following spread of the Middle Neolithic to the Central Chukotka is observed in the Ust-Belskiy burial materials, at Anadyr River, although in general the site dates to the Late Neolithic . First of all, these are: a stepped adze from burial 11, typical of the Belkachi culture in Yakutia , as well as flat triangular points with asymmetric base and flattened prismatic cores, which are also present in the Middle Neolithic sites of the Kolyma region .

The large number of microblades in the burial, which is not characteristic of the Late Neolithic Northeast Asian cultures, led Dikov to distinguish two components, early and late, in the Ust-Belskaya culture. To date the lower boundary of the early Ust-Belskaya culture complex to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, Dikov relied on these Middle Neolithic finds, although, based on the presence of cord impressions ceramics , they could be dated to the 3rd millennium BC. The same ceramic was found at the Kameshki and Chikayevo sites on the Anadyr River, where it was associated with cores and microblades . In the Ust-Belskiy burial, there are also ground burins , similar to the burins found in ASTt of Alaska and Eastern Arctic . Thus, we should distinguish a Middle Neolithic complex of tools and ceramics (including some material from Ust-Belaya, Chikayeva and Kameshki sites) in the Anadyr River Valley. Dikov's note regarding the spread of the cord ceramics into the Anadyr River Basin indicates that he was also inclined to support this model.

On the Chukchi Peninsula, Dikov identified as Middle Neolithic such sites as Naulyn- gytgyn II and III, Igelkhveyem VIII, XV, and XIV, Tymkyrylen I and II, Tyerkemkyn and others containing ceramics, microblades, and prismatic and conical cores . A radiocarbon sample from Terkemkyn dates the site to 4580 ± 40 BP (LE-2661) .

The material discussed here provide evidence for the development of a powerful cultural formation with a high potential in Northeast Asia at the end of the Atlantic and the beginning of the Subboreal periods of the Holocene (its warm phase at 6000-5000 BP). The center of this formation's origin was Yakutia, where at the time the Belkachi Middle Neolithic culture existed. Its local variants spread to the east of the Verkhoyanskiy Range.

Technologically, inhabitants of that time used a sophisticated microblade and inset technology, had a mobile toolkit, which included a wide range of various small chert and bone tools, and demonstrated a high level of adaptability and survival in the harsh Arctic conditions. They explored all types of landscapes, including coastal regions of the Okhotsk Sea. They possessed energy sufficient to transmit a strong cultural signal (most likely by way of direct migration) through the Bering Strait to Alaska, where they gave rise to the Arctic Small Tool tradition, which later spread through the entire American Arctic.

ASTt in Alaska

Many researchers posit that the Neolithic traditions of Kolyma and Chukotka spread into Alaska and North Canada around 5000 years ago, where they gave rise to the Arctic Small Tool tradition . Genetic data also point to Asian origins of the ancient inhabitants of Arctic Alaska, Canada and Greenland .

Originally, ASTt material was distinguished as the Denbigh Flint Complex (culture; DFC) by J. L. Giddings in 1948 when he was studying a specialized tool complex found in the lowest culture-bearing sediments at Iyatayet, on Cape Denbigh in the Norton Sound (Northwest Alaska) . In a thin, intermittent cultural layer, covered with the ceramics and other artifacts from the 2500-year-old Norton culture, he found a complex consisting of only stone tools, noticeably small in size (on average, 4 cm long), meticulously covered by tiny, uniform, parallel or oblique-parallel pressure flaking. The toolkit included microcores, microblades, unihedral and polyhedral burins, flake knives (beak-like), gravers with polished blades, flat bifacially flaked triangular and leaf-shaped projectile points for arrows, darts and harpoons, asymmetrical lanceolate insets, end scrapers on flakes, and others.

No bone tools were found at the site, but their use was indirectly indicated by the stone tools, which were mostly insets to be used in bone tools. In addition, the site was located near the sea, and the discovery of small seal bones in the same layer as the tools suggested that the inhabitants had the harpoon technology and hunted marine mammals. Small flat triangular points were identified as harpoon end-blades . Large numbers of smaller lanceolate projectile points at ASTt sites implies that these hunters used bow-and- arrow technology .

The history of dating the DFC is a complicated one. Based on the Iyatayet stratigraphy and the artifact provenance, Beringia geologist D. Hopkins and Giddings suggested, in their book, that the complex could be 8500-12,000 years old . They had technological and typological basis to think so: Denbigh microblades and wedge cores were compared to the Campus site materials, which were dated to the Late Pleistocene -- early Holo-cene , while the microcores of Greenland's Suqqaq complexes and ASTt cores from the Matcharak Lake site are even today described as “wedge-shaped," manufactured using the Yubetshu and Horoko techniques .

When the C-14 results showed that Denbigh is no more than 4000-5000 years old , Hopkins and Giddings tried to correct this information in the book, but were told that the book was already in press and the text could not be changed (D. Hopkins, pers. comm., 1999). Nonetheless, Giddings did not immediately accept the radiocarbon dates he obtained pointing out that the real age of the Denbigh complex had not yet been estab- lished and drawing parallels between the Denbigh microblades and the Trail Creek Complex dated to around 6000 14C years , although the association of this date with the artifacts is doubtful . Hopkins, based on the C-14 dates, believed that «...the age of DFC is more than 4200 and less than 5000 years» . In reality, as we now know, Denbigh Flint complex is even younger.

Ten years after the DFC was discovered at Iyatayet, in the late 1950s, W. Irving noted typological similarities between the sites in the Brooks Range (Imaigenik) and the south side of the Alaskan Range (Susitna River valley) with the characteristic Denbigh toolkit items, and combined these sites into the Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) . Irving emphasized that the ASTt name signaled a difference between the Northern Alaskan sites of the Denbigh complex from the microblade complexes of the Northern Microblade Tradition (Campus and Pointed Mountain) in the taiga zones of the Central and Southern Alaska and Yukon .

At the same time, in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, researchers examined a number of sites, grouped into Independence I, Pre-Dorset, Saqqaq cultures, which revealed typologico-technological and chronological similarities with the Alaskan sites .

Irving finished formulating the idea of the ASTt tradition and culture in 1962 after excavating the Punyik Point site (Etivlik Lake) in the central Brooks Range, where he found a typical Denbigh toolkit. He noticed similarities between the tool complexes in the sites in Northern Alaska, Northern Canada and Greenland dating to 4500-2500 years ago and included them into the ASTt . He noted that “no single trait is known with certainty to be peculiar to this tradition” . Such defining characteristics were determined later . Observing that all ASTt sites were located above the tree line in the Arctic (except those in the Susitna River Valley and Alaska Peninsula), he emphasized the differences between coastal and inland sites, where the main prey focus was different (marine mammals vs. reindeer) . Like Giddings, he thought that ASTt may have been as old as 6000 years .

Archaeologists started actively using the term ASTt, defined by Irving , for materials similar to the Denbigh Complex, dating to 2000-5000 years ago throughout the North American Arctic and even in the more southern regions, down to the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutians .

As early as 1959, MacNeish included ASTt in the list of ten traditions (cultures) that he distinguished in the Yukon, remarking that the Northern Microblade tradition overlaps with ASTt, many sites of which stretched “from the Seward Peninsula in western

Alaska to the Independence culture in Greenland” . He identified Engigstciak and Firth River complexes as ASTt and combined them into the New Mountain phase . Griffin, who studied Arctic ceramics, stated that the culture of ASTt inhabitants, who adapted to the coastal and tundra areas of the East Arctic “did not penetrate as a complex through the boreal forest zone” . In general, the spread of ASTt from southwestern Alaska to Green-land is accepted .

In his summary monograph about the archaeology of Cape Denbigh, Giddings traced general connections of the DFC across Alaska, including the Aleutian Islands (Chaluka site) as well as Canada and Greenland (Independence I) based on the presence of microblades and small retouched tools in the site's collection . Attempting to solve the question of the Denbigh complex origins, Giddings noted that he “doubt[s] strongly that the DFC is to be derived from any well-known aspect of the Siberian Neolithic...”, but at the same time wrote that the “Mesolithic diffusion out of the Old World appears to have sent Denbigh-like waves along the coasts and northern interior of America” . Since the Neolithic cultures of Northeast Asia were not well-known, and the research into the Paleolithic was only at its infancy, this was a rather adequate position. Concluding the description of Iyatayat's DFC, Giddings wrote that “.. .the microblade and burin technology, as it was practiced in the DFC, spread to Alaska from Asia about 4000 BC” . Similarly to Giddings, Irving did not see any connections between ASTt and the Baikal Region Neolithic cultures and wrote that the Chukotka's complexes known at the time were “too recent to be considered among its [ASTt] antecedents” .

New Northeast Asian Neolithic material obtained in the 1960s by Mochanov and Dikov, and later by Kiryak, Slobodin, Kashin and others , reveals technical and typological analogies between the ASTt complexes and the Middle and Late Holocene complexes of Yakutia, Chikotka, and Alaska in more detail. This allowed scholars to talk about the spread of Asian Neolithic cultures through the Bering Strait to Alaska and regard them as ancestral to the North American Holocene cultures , although some researchers proposed that ASTt originated from the Paleolithic American Paleoarctic Tradition .

ASTt is at the center of solving the question of development of the maritime adaptation and the formation of the Early Maritime Traditions in northern Alaska since ASTt sites yielded the first evidence of seal hunting . However, the specifics of the marine ad-aptation of ASTt population are still not known: it could have been either summer rookery hunting or winter (spring) ice hunting, or it could have included open-sea hunting in boats.

The existence of a harpoon complex at the maritime Alaskan ASTt sites is for now hypothesized, based on singular finds of marine animal bones, the typology of the stone tools (end blades), and ethnographic parallels . The possibility of hunting sea animals in their haul-out sites cannot be excluded; such hunting does not require a developed harpoon technology or boats. At the same time, if the Alaskan ASTt cultures originated from Northeast Asian Neolithic cultures, they would have had to cross the Bering Strait, presumably in boats. In addition, data from the East Arctic ASTt sites indicate that a completely developed maritime adaptation (with boats and harpoons) existed by around 4300 years ago, i. e. concurrent with the earliest stages of ASTt . This supposes a similar level of maritime adaptation for ASTt in Alaska, which seems to have been the core territory of this culture, taking into account its incredibly fast (almost instantaneous, judging from available radiocarbon dates) spread into the entire Arctic of North America.

Some material from Western Canada is older or contemporaneous with the known North Alaskan sites , although this data needs to be verified. Technological evolution could not have been that fast, especially in such a complicated industry as maritime hunting, which means there was a developmental stage of this maritime culture in the Bering Strait area, which has not been identified yet.

It has also been suggested that the ancestors of the ASTt people, identified as continental Neolithic cultures of reindeer hunters from Northeast Asia, crossed the Bering Strait around 5000 years ago (Middle Holocene) over ice . Paleoecological studies have shown that around 5000-4000 years ago, i. e. by the time ASTt had spread to Alaska, environmental conditions (flora, fauna, and climate) similar to the modern ones were established .

Looking at Alaskan ASTt as a result of Neolithic (mid- to late-Holocene) migration of a population from Northeast Asia, we need to define the timing and available evidence for the formation of maritime adaptation in the Asian section of the Pacific Ocean, where such adaptations are identified starting with mid-Holocene at Primorye (Boysman Site) .

Reliable evidence of a profoundly specialized maritime adaptation on the Asian side of the Bering Strait comes from the Unenen and Chertov Ovrag sites, identified as belonging to the Old Wailing culture and dated to ca. 3300 BP , which is significantly younger than the oldest ASTt sites of Alaska and Greenland. Of course, it is clear that this culture was not a “tabula rasa” in terms of its origins. The high level of specialization in maritime subsistence activities at Unenen (hunting whales from boats, harpoon complex, whalebone dwellings) suggests an earlier time for the beginning stages of its formation, approximately 5000-4000 years ago. The stone toolkit of the site bears definite Neolithic traits, pointing to its connection with continental Neolithic cultures of Chukotka. Their emergence on the shores of the Okhotsk, Bering and Chukchi Seas defines the beginning of a maritime adaptation, i.e. a specialized subsistence complex focused on hunting not only terrestrial but also maritime animals. The development of a maritime hunting complex contributed to the emergence of boats and the ability of the ASTt ancestors to cross the Bering Strait, which separates Chukotka and Alaska by no more than 100 km, with islands midway.

Within the entire range of ASTt distribution, researchers currently distinguish Western ASTt, in Alaska , and Eastern ASTt, in Arctic Canada and Greenland . In addition to certain differences in stone tools between the Western and Eastern ASTt toolkits, one significant feature is the presence in Eastern ASTt materials of many well-preserved bone tools: harpoons, lances, inset projectiles, needles, etc.

Based on ca. 100 С-14 dates , the age of Alaskan ASTt is currently determined to be 4500-2200 years , although many dates need to be verified. The legitimacy of both the oldest (over 4000 years) and the youngest (less than 3000 years) dates is questioned .

The issue of the age of Alaskan ASTt and the timing of the migration of its ancestors from Asia remains open since C-14 AMS dates from western Canada (Victoria Island) show, that people were already living there 4500 years ago , which is practically the same age as the oldest securely dated materials from Alaska .

Western ASTt

Regarding the Western ASTt materials (i. e. Alaska), it is important to note that some researchers follow the ASTt concept suggested by Giddings and Anderson, in which they changed William Irving's original definition of ASTt (1957), by including in it not only the DFC, but also cultures which followed: Choris, Norton and Ipiutak (3000-950 years old) . This scheme did not gain traction with Alaskan archaeologists . Without taking this peculiarity into account, blind comparisons of stone tool complexes with the ASTt definition of Giddings and Anderson leads some researchers to erroneous constructions and conclusions .

In addition, D. Anderson working at Onion Portage, a well-stratified site with a series of C-14 dates, distinguished Proto-Denbigh, Classic Denbigh, and Late Denbigh stages . Later D. Anderson concluded that this segmentation does not demonstrate some evolution of the Denbigh Complex (pers. comm. 2002). No such evolution is seen by other researchers .

Within the Western ASTt distribution, researchers distinguish a Northern and a Southern sub-traditions .

Northern Sub-tradition of the Western ASTt is represented by the regional complex Denbigh ASTt, located in the Arctic part of Alaska from the Norton Sound (where Iyatayet site was found) and Seward Peninsula in western Alaska to the Canadian border and lower reaches of the Mackenzie River delta in the Northwest Territories, including the entire Brooks Range, British Mountains, and the Yukon Territory.

A total of around 150 ASTt sites have been discovered. They are located near lakes, in mountain passes, on coastal spits, and in river valleys. Often, there are concentrations of sites in some locations, up to several dozen. Many were visited over a long period of time, like Onion Portage . However, only about 30 sites have secure C-14 dates , ranging from 4700 to 2500 years. The most fully studied sites are Iyatayet (4500-3290 BP) at Norton Sound (recent studies have shown the age of 3717 ± 39 BP on charcoal from a hearth) , Mosquito Lake (3515-2135 BP) , Punyik Point (4660-2260 BP) , Kurupa Lake (3540-3450 BP) , Matcharak Lake (4200-3430 BP) , Croxton (4420-2219 BP) at the Brooks Range, Cape Espenberg (4100-3880 BP) ; Kuzitrin Lake (4770-3750 BP) at Seward Peninsula , Onion Portage (3950-3530 BP) at the Kobuk River , Imaigenik (3330 BP) ; Engigstciak , Walakpa, Coffin, Prudhoe Bay sites and others.

Most of these sites in Alaska are located above the Arctic Circle and in the nearby regions, so they are often characterized by a poorly preserved thin cultural layer disturbed by cryoturbation and solifluction, which often destroy stratigraphy and inverts radio-carbon dates. At coastal sites, archaeologists have dated driftwood and marine mammal bone, which requires applying reservoir effect corrections. This raises questions regarding the “outlier” radiocarbon dates, both the oldest, over 4500 years for Iyatayet and Kuzitrin Lake, otherwise dated to 4200-4300 years old, and the youngest (2135-2260 years old) for Mosquito Lake, Croxton, and Punyik Point. Revising the age of the available organic samples from these sites using the AMS method in several cases yielded dates 1000-1500 years older, around 3300-3600 years ago . Thus, the most likely age for these complexes of the

Northern Sub-tradition of the Western ASTt is approximately 4300 to 3300 years B. P. (3500-4500 cal B. P.).

The sites can be divided into winter sites, with semisubterranean houses, and seasonal sites, used briefly and containing above-ground shelters surrounded by stones (sometimes just a few) on the perimeter. There is little evidence regarding the appearance and structure of dwellings of the Northern sub-tradition of the Western ASTt; this information comes only from a few continental sites, but it enables to distinguish two types of dwellings: winter and summer ones.

Summer dwellings are light portable tent-like structures, with a frame made of poles covered with skins whose edges were held by rocks. The tent rings, oval or sub-rectangular in form, measure about 3-4 meters in diameter. Some of the dwellings were only surrounded by a few stones, as at Lake Matcharak or Kuzitrin Lake . At other sites, the dwelling perimeter was contoured quite regularly, with 20-22 pebbles, as at KIR-124 at Kurupa Lake . Some dwellings have sophisticated stone components with “axial” or “midpassage” structures typical of the Early ASTt in Canada and Greenland . Hearths have not been found in summer dwellings, which means they were likely placed outside the dwellings in other parts of the sites.

Winter ASTt dwellings are identified as semi-subterranean (up to 0.5 m deep) sod houses, oval or sub-rectangular in form, with a central stone fireplace . A unique characteristic of the houses at Onion Portage and Punyik Point are a "mid-passage" and an excavated entrance tunnel . Inside the dwellings researchers have noticed the presence of fire-cracked rocks , presumably used for boiling water.

ASTt stone toolkit includes a large number of thin microblades, microblade cores, bifacially retouched thin projectile points, triangular and lanceolate; side inserts with asymmetrical lanceolate form and an angled base; small end scrapers, burins with multiple rejuvenations; very typical flake knives; burin spalls with ground edges; awls and drills; and retouched adzes with ground edges (Fig. 4). All tools are meticulously covered by tiny, uniform pressure flaking, unifacially or bifacially. Stone points are flaked with narrow parallel, oblique-parallel retouch, fully covering the widest parts of the tools from one edge to the other, giving them a thin lens-like cross-section.

ASTt microblade cores are a special type different from the typical conical or prismatic ones found in the Neolithic sites of Northeast Asia (blocky microblade cores). They have been described as pyramid-like or polyhedral. When drawn or photographed, they often have an unusual projection, which makes their identification difficult. They can be described as short frontal cores with a wide face, and a platform significantly sloping back so that the platform and the face of the core form an acute angle. The platforms, along with the sides, are usually flaked. Microblades, removed from these cores, were used as inserts and were often retouched along one side; many show use-wear.

Flake knives are slightly convex in cross-section, retouched from the dorsal side uni- facially and from the ventral side, with flat retouch only along the cutting edge. The base is narrower than the rest of the knife, while the edge has a sub-rectangular or pointed shape. Scrapers on flakes and blade-like flakes are usually almost completely retouched, except for the lowest part, near the scraping edge; some have distinguishable handles.