Stone Age fishing strategies in a dynamic river landscape: Evidence from Veksa 3, Northwest Russia

Abstract

The role of fishing in Stone Age hunter-gatherer societies of the European forest zone has been gaining importance as a research question over the last years. In order to better understand temporal developments in the role of fishing, changing strategies and their connection to environmental conditions, the study of multi-period stratified site holds good potential for working out a sound empirical basis. Multidisciplinary investigations at the site of Veksa 3 in northwestern Russia have substantially increased our understanding on the development of subsistence strategies of Stone and Early Metal Age populations in this region and on the changing role fishing played in this. For the Early Neolithic period (ca. mid-6th to early 5th mill. cal BC) evidence was gained from seasonal settlement remains within floodplain sediments at the bank of the river Vologda. Fish remains within the settlement structures represent kitchen remains (burnt bones) and processing debris (fish scales) with the dominant species being pike and cyprinids. The only evidence for fishing techniques are bone fish hooks which typologically are linked to Late Mesolithic practices in Northwest Russia. Isotopic analyses of ceramic food crusts attest to an increasing importance of pottery vessels in fish processing from the Early to the Middle Neolithic. For the Late Neolithic and the Early Metal Age period, almost one thousand years of intense regular use of the shallow water area east of the modern Veksa mouth for fishing with stationary constructions is attested to by rich waterlogged in situ remains. The wooden constructions encompass thousands of archaeological timbers, many of them upstanding posts with pointed ends, and several lath screens representing fich fences and fish traps, six of which have been excavated. Radiocarbon datings place the constructions within a time frame between the second half of the 4th and the third quarter of the 3rd millennium cal BC. They are associated with the lacustrine, shallow water phase identified in the palaeoenvironmental studies before the regime at this place changed to a fluvial character.