The Foundational Element of Mobile Land-Use Systems in the Initial Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Adoption of Ceramic Vessels in the Transbaikal Region, Siberia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Some of the earliest ceramic vessels worldwide were used by foraging communities in NE Asia (i.e., Japan, Russian Far East) by roughly 16,000 years ago (i.e., Iizuka 2018). Subsequently, in the Transbaikal region of eastern Siberia the earliest adoption of ceramics by 15,000 or 7000 cal BP (see Hommel 2017; Iizuka 2019; Terry 2022) is thought to have spread into the region through networks of interaction from the Russian Far East (i.e., Hommel 2018; Yanshina 2022). Here, behavioral comparisons are explored between several sites in the Transbaikal region with (N=5) and without (N=6) ceramics from this “transitional” period dating roughly 15,500–10,000 cal BP, during a time of relatively rapid fluctuations between warm and cold periods. Comparisons of fauna, lithic technology, symbolic representations, and dwellings indicate a stable behavioral system involving ephemeral camps and mobile land-use strategies regardless of the presence of ceramics. The additional use of ceramic vessels may have allowed intensification of land mammal and possibly fish extraction during unstable times. These mobile land-use strategies likely facilitated the interaction of foraging groups along river valleys connecting the Transbaikal region with the Russian Far East and the adoption of a new extractive technology into their existing behavioral system.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37057.0