Методические подходы к изучению материалов заключительной стадии верхнего палеолита Алтая

Abstract

The article deals with historiographic review of publications focused on lithic industries of the Final Pleistocene of Altai discussing the methods and approaches used in the analysis of archaeological materials. Clear defined research interest to the Late Paleolithic complexes has been evident since the 1960s. Typological method affording to diagnose the specific types of artifacts of different cultural subdivisions and to make comparisons dominated at that time. Since the 1980s till now the researchers have been using a set of methods enabling them to take an overall look at the total habitus of the certain lithic collection. First of all this is the technological methods that afford to reconstruct the producing process based on the lithic artifacts’ morphology. Such studies of the Terminal Upper Paleolithic industries of Altai are rare for the time being, the revision of the previous excavated archaeological materials with technological point of view is required. This ensures that the enormous block of the archaeological data will be included into the dynamically developing system of conceptualizations of cultural processes in the Late Pleistocene.