Archaeological Collection from Ust-Kanskaya Cave in the Biysk Museum of Local History

The article analyzes a non-stratified lithic complex collected in 1964 by the staff of the V.V. Bianki Biysk Museum of Local History in Ust-Kanskaya Cave in Central Altai. The collection comes from the dump of the 1954 excavations conducted by the expedition led by S.I. Rudenko. A total of 150 items, divided into three cultural and chronological groups, are considered. The majority of the materials are attributed to the Middle Paleolithic. Primary flaking in this industry is characterized by radial and Levallois technologies. Main types of blanks include short, medium- or large-sized flakes. The tool kit includes samples of side-scrapers, truncated-faceted pieces, denticulate-notched forms, and retouching flakes. The Upper Paleolithic complex of the site most likely includes a narrow-faced core for the microblade production, as well as an end-scraper and a series of blanks made of high-quality dark-colored microquartzite. The Holocene materials include a stone arrowhead and a whetstone. The triangular arrowhead with a notched tip is typical of the Afanasievo culture of the Early Bronze Age of the Altai Mountains. The whetstone made of finegrained sandstone has wide parallels in the chronological range from the Bronze Age to the paleoethnographic time. The collection provided herein has become a significant addition to the research materials by S.I. Rudenko. The finds from the unstratified collection attributed to the Middle Paleolithic horizons generally correspond to the previously studied assemblages of the site. At the same time, truncated-faceted pieces and a déjeté tool, as well as a core for the microblades production, were noted among the materials recovered for the first time for the cave industries

Bronze Age · Cave · Excavation · Middle Paleolithic · Middle Stone Age · Upper Paleolithic · Marine and environmental studies · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Soil and Environmental Studies