M.G. Zhilin

Arrowheads of the "Shigir" type in the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic of Eastern Europe.

Abstract

Investigations of last decades brought to light many arrowheads, traditionally related to socalled "Shigir" type, coming from homogenous, well dated sites and cultural layers. Detailed typological analysis, carried out by the author, shows, that they belong to two types. The first is composed of arrowheads with biconical head, pronounced stem and a conical or flat base and has 13 variants (fig. 1, 1-13).Artifacts of the second type have no stem and can be called short subbiconical, they are divided into 3 variants (fig. 1, 14-16).

Different variants of both types are met only in the forest zone of Eastern Europe and Middle Urals region (fig. 2). They are present among the materials of Kunda, Veretye, Butovo and Shigir cultures and in the Olenyi ostrov cemetery in the Mesolithic; Narva and Upper Volga cultures in the early Neolithic. Table 1 shows chronological distribution of variants of these artifacts based on homogenous sites, dated by C-14 or pollen analysis.

Arrowheads with biconical head emerge in early Mesolithic and survive untill the end of early Neolithic, being gradually replaced by short subbiconical arrowheads, which first appear in the middle Mesolithic.

Spatial distribution of these artifacts reflect a vast area of links of ancient population, which produced such arrowheads. The nature of these links is hard to determine now, but direct contacts seem more probable, than exchange of arrowheads.

The article in Russian is available on the same website, subdirectory "Публикации на русском"