A tusk plate with an engraving from the Paleolithic period

This study introduces the data on a mammoth ivory plate with engravings, stored in the collection of the Gomel Palace and Park Ensemble. This artifact was likely excavated during archaeological researches at the Podluzhye I (Berdyzh) site in 1970 under the supervision of V.D. Budko. Despite publications mentioning this item, the mammoth ivory plate, already in a fragmentary state, has long been neglected. This is primarily due to the lack of field documentation, which does not allow us confidently attribute this find to the Podluzhye I (Berdyzh) site. The work verifies the data regarding the artifact’s association with the site collection and identifies the route and reasons for the find’s transfer to the Museum. After the preliminary study, the fragment of the mammoth tusk was stored in the «archaeological classroom» of Gomel State University, which was headed by V.D. Budko. After his depature in 1979, university student Yu. V. Obodenko transferred a part of the collection including two fragments of a decorated mammoth ivory plate found in 1970 at the Podluzhye I (Berdyzh) site to the Gomel Palace and Park Ensemble. During our study the items were cleaned of earlier conservation residues and re-conserved, which revealed that the two fragments belong to a single mammoth ivory plate. An analysis of the engravings on the artifact was conducted, revealing several groups of cuts, oblique crosses, and zigzags. These compositions fully correspond to the ornamentation traditions of the Upper Paleolithic of the Russian Plain’s central region. The closest analogies to Berdyzh engravings are found in materials from the eastern Gravettian sites of this region, particularly Avdeyevo; Kostenki 1, and Khotylevo 2.

Artifact (error) · Assemblage (archaeology) · Coffin · Debitage · Mammoth · Marine and environmental studies · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Soil and Environmental Studies