An Early Pottery Site in the Chukchi Peninsula

Abstract

Discovery of a second small prehistoric site in the interior of the Chukchi Peninsula during the summer of 1952 is of interest despite the paucity of the material recovered. The finds, including the first pottery from the region, are sufficient to shed some light on a littleknown area whose past is of great concern to Americanists. Okladnikov's report (1953) forms the basis for this account.The first interior site, consisting of surface finds on the Yakitikiveem River judged on typological grounds to be of “Neolithic” age in the East Siberian sense of the term, was summarized by Krader (1952). Previously, archaeological knowledge of the extreme northeast tip of Siberia had been limited to coastal sites left by a sedentary sea hunting population — ancestors of the Eskimo. The oldest of these are not thought by Russian investigators to go beyond 500 B.C. The Yakitikiveem finds undoubtedly represent the wandering reindeer hunters of the tundra who must have preceded the historic reindeer-breeding population in the interior of the Chukchi Peninsula.