Results of Physical and Chemical Investigations of the Neolithic Pottery from Amurzet Site and the Settlements Kazakevichevo and Sheremetievo I (Amur Region)

V. E. Medvedev; I. V. Filatova

List of issues > «Geoarchaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology Series». 2017. Vol. 20

Results of Physical and Chemical Investigations of the Neolithic Pottery from Amurzet Site and the Settlements Kazakevichevo and Sheremetievo I (Amur Region)

Full text (russian)

Author(s)

V. E. Medvedev, I. V. Filatova

Abstract

The article presents the results of physical and chemical studies of the Neolithic pottery of the Amurzet site, Kazakevichevo and Sheremetievo I settlements. The upper layer of Amurzet site is a burial of Late Iron Age – Middle Age, the lower layer is a Stone Age settlement. The Neolithic settlement Amurzet can be characterized by evident signs of syncretism it fills in a regional gap at the junction of several cultural traditions of early Middle Neolithic. Two problems of Neolithic archeology of the South of the Far East are connected with the pottery of this site: 1) a sort of “hybridization”, i.e. the mixture of features within a single pottery complex and, accordingly, the allocation of “transit sites” and “transit zones” where contacts could occur 2) the allocation of new cultural-chronological complexes or types. The purpose of this investigation is to study this pottery complex by using various methods, including natural sciences, and to compare it with synchronous archaeological materials from adjacent territories in order to reveal signs of similarity or differences. The main task is to present the results of physical and chemical analyzes of the Neolithic pottery of the Amurzet site and the Kazakevichevo and Sheremetievo I settlements. The use of the natural sciences in the investigations of the pottery traditions is topical in modern archeology. The novelty is determined by the fact that the physicochemical methods for the first time are applied to the pottery of these sites. The collection of pottery from these sites consists of 396 examples, 15 fragments from different parts of the vessels were examined by the methods of thermogravimetry and X-ray diffractometry. The obtained results revealed the signs of similarity in the traditions of the pottery production of “transit” sites (Amurzet site and Kazakevichevo and Sheremetievo I settlements) of adjacent territories of the Jewish Autonomous Region and Khabarovsk Region: the use of local ferruginous clays, similar in their mineral composition the presence of quartz as the basis of the mineral pottery composition, as well as the presence of feldspars (plagioclase and orthoclase) in it in some cases – the use of sand as a mineral additive (which includes products of destruction of rocks of volcanic origin: quartz, plagioclase and orthoclase) and organic inclusions (plant residues) short-term firing at a rather low firing temperature (within 600°C).

Keywords

Far East, Neolithic, pottery, physical and chemical studies, radiography, thermogravimetry

UDC

УДК 903.023(571.620/571.621)«634»

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