Рубящие орудия из камня в мезолите Среднего Зауралья (по материалам стоянок Горбуновского торфяника)
Stone Tools for Chopping in the Mesolithic of the Middle Trans-Urals (with particular reference to the materials of the Gorbunovski peat bog sites)

Summary/Abstract: Until recently, it was thought that the Middle Trans-Urals was settled by humans only during the Late Mesolithic. Presence of polished tools for chopping wood at Mesolithic sites was one of the arguments in favor of this view. The fieldwork conducted by the authors at the Gorbunovo peat bog in Sverdlovsk region revealed cultural layers of the Early, Middle and Late Mesolithic buried in lake and bog deposits. A series of 14C dates together with pollen data place these layers into an interval from the early Pre-Boreal to late Boreal periods. All these layers yielded tools for chopping made of various non siliceous rocks, as well as their preforms and waste products. The latter indicates that the manufacturing of these tools took place directly on-site. The article presents the results of morphological, technological and traceological analyses of these artefacts. It is shown that tools for chopping, including polished ones, emerged in the Trans-Urals (and in some parts of Eastern Europe as well) in the very beginning of the Mesolithic and remained in use till the very end of this period. The authors see the explanation of this phenomenon, first, in the scarcity of siliceous raw materials suitable for the production of wood cutting tools and, second, in the abundance of various non siliceous rocks good for the manufacture of ground axes, adzes and abrasive tools.

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