An Early Iron Age Camp of Reindeer Hunters in the Bolshezemelskaya Tundra, Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Abstract

This study outlines the fi ndings of excavations at More-Yu II—a site in the northern Bolshezemelskaya tundra. The habitation layer with numerous charcoal lenses was discovered inside the layer of buried soil overlain by eolian sand. Most fi nds are ceramics and animal bones. Arrowheads, o rnaments, tools, and ritual items are very rare. On the basis of palynological and faunal analyses, environmental changes from the sub-boreal warming until the end of the sub-Atlantic period are reconstructed. The temperature regime during the formation of cultural deposits was unstable. The principal subsistence strategy was reindeer hunting. The age of reindeer suggests that habitation periods coincided with cold seasons. Radiocarbon dates generated from reindeer bones point to the Early Iron Age. The camp dwellers were native reindeer hunters inhabiting the tundra belt of northeasternmost Europe. Ceramics representing the More-Yu type belong to the early stage of the Subarctic Pechora culture. They mark the Arctic component that became part of the n orthern Glya denovo population, abruptly changing the Finno-Permic culture of the taiga part of the Pechora basin in northern Urals.