New Traces of an Inland Neolithic Culture in the Chukotsk (Chukchi) Peninsula

• Published in: American Antiquity
• Main Authors: Okladnikov, A. P., Nekrasov, I. A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1959
• Subjects: Museology; Archeology; Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); History; Arctic; Anadyr; Anadyr’; Amguema; Anadyr'; Caribou Eskimo; Chukchi; Chukchi Peninsula; eskimo*; Paleo-Eskimo; Yukaghir
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/277444; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S000273160002713X

Abstract The El'gytkhyn site consists of a cache of stone artifacts and a nearby campsite on the shores of Lake El'gytkhyn on the central Anadyr plateau. The cache contained some 50 artifacts, both knives and points made on large flake-blades and carefully retouched by pressure flaking, and blanks from which they were made. Similar points were found at the campsite along with scrapers and other tools, many retouched chips, prismatic nuclei, and the blades struck from them. Previously, similar artifacts had been found at the Amguema site about 300 km. to the east and the Chirovoe site about 100 km. to the south. The latter is a settlement with pottery as well as stone artifacts. The inland Neolithic culture is compared to the Caribou Eskimo and the Yukaghir, and the El'gytkhyn site is interpreted as the summer hunting camp of people following reindeer to the north from permanent winter villages like the Chirovoe site. The presence of blades removed from prismatic cores, retouched points and other artifacts, tools with graver facets, and pottery in both the Chukchi inland Neolithic and the Paleo-Eskimo cultures suggests movements from the Asiatic to the American Arctic by 4000 years ago.