Prehistory of the Upper Yenisei area (southern Siberia)

Abstract

Our understanding of the prehistory of the Upper Yenisei area is based on several key multilayered sites, which provide an excellent opportunity for the investigation of long-term culture change and the reconstruction of culture history. The earliest traces of prehistoric people in the region date to the Sartan glacial. Ui I is dated to ca. 22,000–17,000 B.P. and belongs to the middle phase of the Yenisei Upper Paleolithic, predating the period of the Final Paleolithic Afontova culture (16,000–10,000 B.P.). The Early Holocene period remains little known; there is only one assemblage (the lower cultural layer of Sosnovka Golovan'skaya) which may be attributed to the Epipaleolithic. In the seventh and sixth millennia B.P., the aceramic Early Neolithic (the uppermost cultural horizons of Maina and Ui II, Ust'Khemchik 3, etc.) was widespread and was replaced by the Late Neolithic Verkhneeniseisk culture in the fifth millennium B.P. This was succeeded by the Eneolithic Afanas'eva culture at the end of the fifth millennium B.P. and, later, by the Bronze Age Okunev culture (until the twelfth century B.C.). From the eighth to the second centuries B.C., Scythian cultures flourished in the area, until the invasion of the Huns. All of these stages of the Holocene culture sequence are represented in the stratified site of Toora-Dash.