Late Upper Paleolithic of the South Minusinsk Basin and its Mountain Surroundings: Research Results and Problems

Late Upper Paleolithic of the South Minusinsk Basin
and its Mountain Surroundings: Research Results and Problems

doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2023.51.3.124-129

S.A. Vasiliev
Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, Dvortsovaya nab. 18, St. Petersburg, 191186, Russia

This paper briefly reviews the main Late Upper Paleolithic sites of the Upper Yenisei—in the South Minusinsk Basin and in the adjacent highlands of the West Sayan. Known sites mostly date to the Late Sartan period. They concentrate on the Upper Abakan River, in the Yenisei valley between Maina and Sayanogorsk, and on the Upper Tuba River. Information is provided on the composition of fauna and on pollen data, indicating the predominance of mosaic landscapes with alternating forested and open steppe spaces. Climate fluctuations of the Final Pleistocene were reflected in the alternation of phases of herbaceous and forest vegetation. The association of most sites with deposits of the second and third terraces has been established. Certain sites, however, are associated with cover deposits at high elevations, on the one hand, and with the first terrace lowered to the level of the high floodplain, on the other. In recent years, the Late Paleolithic of the Upper Yenisei has been considered in the context of the original version of catastrophic floods, which presumably occurred repeatedly in the Late Pleistocene. The nature of the stratigraphic sections of the multilayered sites of the Maina group on the Yenisei, however, disagrees with this hypothesis, and indicates continuous alluvial sedimentation in the Sartan Age. A conclusion is made about the predominance of remains of seasonal hunter-gatherer habitation sites on the riverbanks. But there are also traces of a lithic workshop near the quartzite outcrops (Kuibyshevo II). Unfortunately, no sites earlier than the Late Upper Paleolithic are known in the region, and Mesolithic ones are extremely rare.

Keywords: Yenisei, Abakan, Minusinsk Basin, Sartan Age, Late Upper Paleolithic, site location