Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Microblade-based Industries in Northeastern Asia

This monograph creatively uses Lewis Binford’s macroecological approach developed from his book Constructing Frames of Reference (2001) against both interglacial and glacial climate conditions, to provide an explanation of variation and change among late Pleistocene and early Holocene microblade-based societies in northeastern Asia.

Materials from Dwelling 2 on Suchu Island, the Lower Amur (1977 Season, Excavation III)

This article presents the fi nal results of excavations at one of the largest Neolithic sites in northeastern Asia— a settlement on Suchu Island on the Amur. Most of the rich collection (3967 spec.), owned by IAET SB RAS (stone tools, ceramics, ornaments, and artistic and ritual artifacts), has not been described before. This publication focuses on the analysis of artifacts from dwelling 2 (excavation III, 1977). We describe the construction of this semi-underground dwelling, circular in plan view. The typological analysis of the lithics indicates a complex economy. Many of them (arrowheads, projectile points, inserts, knives, plummets) relate to hunting and fi shing, and to processing carcasses (end-scrapers, scrapers, burins, combination tools), others are chopping tools. The distinctive feature of the lithics is that some are bifacial. The analysis of the ceramics suggests that they belong to the Late Neolithic Voznesenovskoye culture. The use of binocular microscopy allowed us to assess the technological and constructive properties of the ceramics, as well as their morphological, decorative, and functional features. Non-ut ilitarian artifacts shed light on the worldview of the Suchu people. The collection dates to the mid-second millennium BC.

Clarification of some imperfectly understood characters in the Chinese species Thalictrum przewalskii (Ranunculaceae), with reduction of T. lasiogynum and T. latistylum to its synonymy

Based on critical observations on both herbarium specimens (including type material) and living plants in the wild, here we clarify some morphological characters in the Chinese species Thalictrum przewalskii (Ranunculaceae) and demonstrate that T. lasiogynum and T. latistylum, described respectively from China’s Sichuan and Gansu provinces, are conspecific with it. We therefore reduce T. lasiogynum and T. latistylum to the synonymy of T. przewalskii. Thalictrum sect. Platystylus, which was established to accommodate T. latistylum, is reduced to the synonymy under T. sect. Omalophysa. The identity of T. rockii is further confirmed and the distribution in China of T. sparsiflorum, a species most closely similar to T. przewalskii and widely distributed in northeastern Asia and North America, is also determined.

Microblade Technology in Northern Sweden: Chronological and Cultural Irnplications

This article deals with Mesolithic microblade technology in northern Sweden. The artifacts in question are keeled scrapers, microblade cores, i.e. handle cores (also called wedge-shaped cores) and conical/cylindrical microblade cores, and microblades from Norrland and the provinces of Dalarna and Värmland. It is proposed that microblade production from handle cores was introduced perhaps as early as 7700/7500 BP in northern Sweden, but at least some time during the period 8000—7000 BP. It is possible that this type of core survives right up to ca. 5500 BP. The north Swedish handle core tradition is compared with its neighboring cultures. It is argued that microblade production from oblong handle cores was an innovation that spread from southern Scandinavia or southeastem Norway/western Sweden to northern Sweden during the Early Atlantic period. The Scandinavian handle core tradition as a whole is further compared with its counterparts in northeastern Asia and North America