ACCIDENTAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS IN THE SOUTH AREAS OF THE LOWER TOM’ RIVER VALLEY

Abstract

The article introduces for scientific use and achaeological interpretation the items from the collection of the Kemerovo Regional Local History Museum, Museum-Preserve "Tomskaya Pisanitsa", the Archaeology, Ethnography and Ecology of Siberia museum (Kemerovo State University Museum) and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography (Tomsk State University). The methodology of the research is based on the definition of the term «incidental find» for particular cases of incidental finding of an archaeological site which allows one to use this type of sources for historical and cultural reconstructions in that region for the first time. The research applies the methods of mapping and landscape-geomorphological analysis, comparative and typological method, periodization method. The article determines the main meaning of accidental finds for updating the archaeological map of the least researched Tom region areas connected to the territory of Kemerovo and watershed areas of the right bank of the River Tom. The work outlines the chronological group of the items and presents some conclusions about the possible connection of the stone tools with those from Izylinka, Irbinsko-Novo Kuskovo or Krokhalevo Neolithic-Early period of the Developed Bronze Age settlements; about the accidentally found knives and diggers confirming Irmen cultural domination in Late Bronze period and exchanges with cross-border cultural groups; about typological proximity of a number of Scythian period accidental finds with the same period complex in the Middle Yenissey area, Achinsk-Mariinsk forest-steppe and Tomsk Ob River area; about the association of the Kulay and Post-Kulay period findings with ritual practices at cult places.