Archaeological materials of the sites of the Lower Yenisei region in the funds of the Yenisei Museum-Reserve (based on the works of R.V. Nikolaev, 1958–1959)

The article analyzes the results of an archaeological and ethnographic expedition, which conducted in the north of Krasnoyarsk Krai in 1958–59. Archaeological work was realized under the supervision of R.V. Nikolaev, a researcher at the Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum. The following sites were surveyed: Serkovo, Sukhaya Tunguska, Surgutikha, Podkamennaya Tunguska, a Ket settlement in the village of Stary Sulomay, and a Neolithic – Early Bronze Age settlement in the Vysoky area on the Ket’ River. Most of these sites were previously unknown. The analysis of the expedition results was carried out using R.V. Nikolaev’s field diaries and reports, which stored in the archives of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum of Local History and the Yenisei Museum-Reserve; a significant part of the information is published for the first time. Archaeological collection was divided between two museums - the Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum and the Yenisei Museum. This publication describes the dating items, which transferred to the funds of the Yenisei Museum. Among them are fragments of ceramic vessels similar the pottery of the Serovo culture, discovered during excavations of a dwelling in the Vysoky area on the Ket’ River, ceramics of the Ust-Kova type of the early Middle Ages from the Podkamennaya Tunguska site, vessels and an iron plate bracelet of the Lesosibirsk culture of the 11th-14th centuries AD, as well as an iron knife, most likely related to the material culture of the Kets. These materials supply the existing ideas about the material culture of the taiga population of the Lower Yenisei in various chronological periods and can become the first step towards restoring the entire volume of data obtained by the archaeological and ethnographic expedition of 1958-59 in the valleys of the Ket’, Yenisei, Kureika and Podkamennaya Tunguska rivers.

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