K. A. Zheleznyakov’s Study of the Archaeological Sites of Heishui Mohe in Northern Manchuria on the Ashihe River in the 1930s – 1940s

Abstract

The archaeological study of Manchuria began by Russians researchers at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The scientific works of Russian archaeologists from Harbin to this day remain in demand in the modern scientific community both in Russia and China. This article presents an analysis of materials from Mohe sites found by K. A. Zheleznyakov in the 1930s – 1940s East of Harbin. A small publication from 1946 is now one of the first in the study of Mohe culture. This is the only article that contains information about 9 archaeological sites in the lower reaches of the Ashihe River. Some of them have already disappeared as a result of the expansion of the city and settlements boundaries. The artifacts are kept in the collections of the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum in Harbin, to which Russian archaeologists have limited access. This rare publication provides detailed morphological and parametric characteristics of the discovered vessels of the Mohe culture. For the first time in Mohe archeology, a name for vessels based on their shape was proposed. K. A. Zheleznyakov presumably attributed the sites and burials to the Anchegu Mohe. Their chronology was limited to the Mohe period. During a comparative analysis with known materials from the sites of the Amur region, Primorye and Manchuria, it was established that the vessels found on the banks of the Ashihe River belong to the Nayfeld group of Heishui Mohe of the 8th – 9th centuries.