Re: A Simple View of Mesolithic East Europe

The downloaded file is a revision of jdcroft's powerpoint page of the
archaeology of mesolithic eastern and central Europe and the Mediterranean
basin. It is based on Dolukhanov's description summarized below. I thought
it worthwhile because, in the jdcroft's original powerpoint, the
archaelogical units on page 2 did not quite match up with the language units
on page 3. (E.g., Swiderian has no match) Dolukhanov's view also solves the
problem of Uralic's adjacency with IE, explains Uralic as moving to the
post-glacial north as Swiderian and identifies "Tardenoissian" as a influence
from the Near East.

The map represents roughly 9000-7000. Dolukhanov notes some eastern
influences that may have arrived after trhis time period in the area of
northern Russia.

Here's my summary of Dulkhanov's view of the mesolithic in this area:

"What I have at hand on the period 9000 - 7500 BCE is Dolukhanov (1996).
Based on his report on the late paleolithic and mesolithic in Europe and
western Asia, it is not easy to identify a movement or migration from Central
Asia at the time. The main lithic-based assemblages north of the Black Sea
seem to be extensions of central European groups (Lyngby and Ahrensburg) and
a group that might be seen as more indigenous (Swiderian). There is
apparently a fair amount of mixing of these different traditions in sites
that reach from the west to the Volga. Dolukhanov describes a continuous
"periglacial" zone of human habitation from central Europe to the area of the
Black Sea that expanded uniformly northward following the climatic changes
that occurred with the recession of the glacier.

With regard to the mesolithic, beginning about 8000 to 6000BC, Dolukhanov
reports prevailing "cultural continuity in relation to the preceding Late
Paleolithic Groups." He also writes "although our data indicate no major
population displacements occuring during the course of the Mesolithic, there
are some indirect indications, based primarily on anthropological records,
for some influx from outside. If these movements really took place, they
were of minor scale, with new populations rapidly absorbed into the old
ones," and acquiring the "cultural characteristics" of the indigenous
population. (p. 60)

There is a cultural innovation of the time worth noting and that is the
arrival of "geometrics" in the lithic assemblages in the Pontic lowlands and
the Crimea, identified by Telegin as "Grebenkian" and "Kurekian" (the later
showing uncalibrated dates of 7000-6000BC.) These distinctively shaped tools
begin to appear in the "epipaleolithic" assemblages in the Near East as early
as 17,000BC. This style of microlithic industry (Tardenoissian) had already
spread into some parts of Western Europe and the Mediterranean Basin and
manifested in earlier western traditions such as the "Epi-Gravertian",
"Castelnovian", etc.

The only report by Dolukhanov of "anthropological" evidence of migration from
the east in this period is the "controversial" finds at the cemetery on Oleni
Island at Lake Onega, in Russian Karelia, where Yakimov and Kharitonov (1979)
identified "Mongoloid affinities" among a minority component of the remains.
The "affinities" have also been explained as the persistence of "Cro-Magnoid
types" and other such stuff. Dolukhanov writes that C-14 dating of the site
in 1990 puts its time span at 6500 to 6300 BC.

Dolukhanov makes a somewhat convincing case that the population in the
northwestern Russia, Finland and the vicinity of the northern Volga were
stable throughout the period from periglacial expansion to the coming of the
neolithic (pit-comb). And that the Sperrings culture in Finland, Volosovo and
Volga-Kama and possibly the Narva and Neman cultures south of the Baltic all
represented a continuity of peoples to be identified with Uralic speakers,
with Narva perhaps becoming IE speakers in the course of the neolithic."

Steve Long