Publications
An integrative examination of elk imagery in Middle Holocene Cis-Baikal, Siberia
Elk are common in forager archaeological artwork of northern Eurasia. During the Middle Holocene, the peoples of Cis-Baikal produced numerous elk depictions in rock art and mobiliary items. Most of the rock art has now been destroyed. However, Cis-Baikal’s cemeteries and habitation sites are increasingly well documented, with the former generating numerous elk images. To better understand this imagery, we first discuss elk biology and behavior. We then contextualize the imagery within other forms of archaeological data, including [...]
Lateglacial and Holocene changes in vegetation and human subsistence around Lake Zhizhitskoye, East European midlatitudes, derived from radiocarbon-dated pollen and archaeological records
The numerous lake and peat sedimentary archives of Central European Russia are ideal for studying the Lateglacial–Holocene climate and vegetation history of the region. However, robustly dated palaeoenvironmental records have only become available in the last decade and are still few and far between. Together with the continuously growing archaeological record and increasing focus on absolute dating of cultural assemblages, such records, where available, offer an excellent opportunity to study human-environment interactions in the region. For this study [...]
Morphological Analysis of the Bone Serrated Points from Early Neolithic Complexes of Shamanka 2 Burial Ground [in Russian]
An analysis of the bone serrated points from the burial complexes of Shamanka 2 burial ground is presented. The origin of the collection makes it “ritual”, which may explain the large number of undamaged items. Several spikes have been broken intentionally at the time of their interment. Supposedly, several points have been specifically made for interment. In accordance with the morphological analysis, we have identified two groups of serrated spikes: (I) detachable tools and (II) non-detachable tools. Differences [...]
Middle Holocene hunter–gatherer mortuary practices in the Little Sea microregion on Lake Baikal, part I: Early Neolithic
Archaeological research on Cis-Baikal Early Neolithic mortuary practices has traditionally focused on the Kitoi mortuary tradition with its rich materials known from several large cemeteries of the Angara Valley and Southwest Baikal. Assemblages that do not fit that description have attracted much less attention. Currently, in Cis-Baikal, the Little Sea microregion has the highest number of such graves. The mortuary variation displayed by this material (31 burials from 26 graves at 8 localities) allows their provisional classification into [...]
A four-stage approach to re-associating fragmented and commingled human remains
Bioarchaeological and forensic anthropological methods are limited in their ability to re-associate human skeletal remains that have been both fragmented and commingled. Although many methods for individualizing commingled remains exist, they are rendered ineffective when the level of fragmentation is high. In these contexts, human remains are often approached similarly to faunal assemblages, regarded as sets of fragmented elements rather than as groups of fragments representing an individual. This paper introduces a new, four-stage approach to identifying discrete [...]
Breakthrough in purification of fossil pollen for dating of sediments by a new large-particle on-chip sorter
Particle sorting is a fundamental method in various fields of medical and biological research. However, existing sorting applications are not capable for high-throughput sorting of large-size (>100 micrometers) particles. Here, we present a novel on-chip sorting method using traveling vortices generated by on-demand microjet flows, which locally exceed laminar flow condition, allowing for high-throughput sorting (5 kilohertz) with a record-wide sorting area of 520 micrometers. Using an activation system based on fluorescence detection, the method successfully sorted 160-micrometer [...]