The Earliest Culture History of the Northern Part of the European USSR: A Review Article

Abstract

Two contributions of unusual value for our knowledge of the comb- and pit-marked pottery culture of North-eastern Europe have recently appeared in vols. 20 and 29 of the series Materialy i Issledovaniia po Arkheologii SSSR (Materials and Investigations on Archaeology of the USSR), published in Moscow in 1951 and 1952 by Akademiia Nauk SSSR. The English titles of the two volumes are:(1) The Neolithic and Early Metal Age Sites in the Northern Part of the European USSR (1951, 173 pp., 82 illustrations), edited by M. E. Foss, which includes studies on ‘The Pile-dwelling Site on the Modlona River and other Sites in the Charozer Region of the Vologda District’ by A. J. Briusov, ‘The Neolithic and Early Metal Age Sites on the Northern Coast of Lake Onega’ by N. N. Gurina and ‘The Neolithic Sites on the Northern Coasts of the Kola Peninsula’ by N. N. Gurina.(2) The Earliest History of the Northern Part of the European USSR (1952. 280 pp., 121 illustrations), by M. E. Foss, edited by A. J. Briusov.The former publication, which includes a detailed report by Briusov on the sites in the Vologda region, dated by stratigraphic evidence and pollen analysis, and the well presented studies by Gurina on the culture in the Lake Onega region and on the Kola Peninsula in the extreme north, is both a prelude and a supplement to the latter which embraces the entire northern part of the USSR.