Archaeological Materials from the Chukchi Peninsula

Abstract

Evidence indicates that the interior culture of Chukotka was using bronze implements at the end of the second and beginning of the first millennium B.C. and the population had become somewhat sedentary. The similarity between late Neolithic and early Bronze Age of Chukotka and the pre-Eskimo Arctic cultures of America is apparent; it also is probable that during this period Chukotka formed part of the area of development of the Yukagir and the Chukchi. The first significant archaeological collection from Chukotka, made by N. P. Sokol'nikov in 1904-07, can be divided into two main cultural groupings on the basis of stone-working techniques; the older group, probably from near Ust'-Belaia, is typical of the continental Neolithic of northeast Asia, and the other group appears to be of the “splitting adz culture,” 7th-8th centuries A.D., and probably was found upstream from Markovo. Burials from the Ust'-Belaia cemetery had associated stone artifacts and pottery similar to ones from Yukutia and the Lake Baikal region of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age; further corroboration of this dating includes associated bronze artifacts and a radiocarbon date of 2860 ± 95 B.P. from another mound in the same cemetery site.