Dnieper-Dvina basin at the end of 6th millennium BC and early ceramic traditions of the Circum-Baltic region

Abstract

The most ancient pottery in the Eastern Europe appeared at the end of the 7th – first half of the 6th millennium BC and spread across a greater part of the Eastern Europe, including the Dnieper-Dvina basin by the middle of the 6th millennium BC. At the end of the 6th millennium BC new ceramic traditions appeared here, attributed to the Rudnya archaeological culture. The authors present an overview of the ceramic complex, bone industry, constructions, and chronology of the Rudnya culture. Similarities with ceramic complex of the Rudnya culture were found within various groups of the Narva culture. It could testify the change of vectors of cultural contacts at the end of 6th millennium BC manifesting destruction of the established network of cultural contacts that existed before in the 6th millennium BC. The Narva culture traditions probably spread eastwards from Eastern Baltic at the end of 6th millennium BC. Such a radical change of material culture might be regarded as a result not only of the cultural impulse, but probably arrival of new population from the western territories to the Upper Western Dvina area.