Archaeologists have discovered the pommel of the late Mesolithic era

15:18, August 22, 2017

Significant discovery for study of the Urals

The archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local History and Ural Federal University has discovered a unique object - the pommel of the Late Mesolithic Age (about eight thousand years old). The discovery can change the idea of the time of appearance and development of culture in the Urals.

"In the Late Mesolithic layer, we found a unique object, a stone pommel. This is a very rare item, a flat disk-shaped pebble with a hole punched in the center and engraved on both sides with a pattern. In the Urals, there are five findings like this. It is a symbolic thing from the field of spiritual culture, since engraved disks do not refer to the everyday life. Their owner was probably not an ordinary person, but a person of high rank," says Lyubov Kosinskaya, an associate professor of the Department of Archeology and Ethnology at UrFU Faculty of History.

Artifacts were found on the Gorbunovsky peat bog near Nizhny Tagil. The expedition operated from July 3 to August 12 at the arheological site “Beregovaya-2”.

Excavations were preceded by long-term searches. Leading researcher of the Department of Stone Age Archeology of the Institute of Archeology, the Russian Academy of Science, Mikhail Zhilin (head of the expedition) and chief researcher of the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local History, archeologist Svetlana Savchenko, were looking for places with cultural layers rich in artifacts.

For a month of excavation, archaeologists have found many artifacts: bone arrowheads, daggers and other items made of bone, household items, stone flakes, plates, polished chopping tools, kitchen utensils, which are 6-11 thousand years old.

Found artifacts will be transferred to the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local History, where they will be represented at the exhibition. However, before they get to the exposition, the findings will be studied by researchers (under the terms of the grant, the scientists have three years for studies) and restored by the specialists.

The studies of artifacts will be conducted in the museum and laboratories. Thus, the fauna will be studied at the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the soil features at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, radiocarbon analysis will be carried out by the Moscow laboratory, and the radiocarbon and dendrochronological analysis of the tree by the staff of the German Archaeological Institute (Berlin). Stone artifacts will be studied in UrFU.