Forest-steppe Podonye at the turn of the Holocene and the problem of the transformation of the "transition period" industries
Authors:   Center for Conservation Archaeological Research, Fedyunin Ivan V. 
Published: May 2023

The article discusses the problem of transition from the Paleolithic to theMesolithic through the prism of industry transformation. For the territory of the Middle Don, it was previously considered by P.I. Boriskovsky, S.N. Zamyatnin, V.P. Levenk, A.A. Formozov, A.N. Bessudnov, A.A. Bessudnov, and I.V. Fedyunin. The first monograph on the Mesolithic of the Middle Don concluded that there was no continuity between the Late Paleolithic and Early Mesolithic industries. The materials of the study were industries and faunal remains of sites, natural-scientific reconstructions of the natural environment in the Final Paleolithic and Early Mesolithic of the forest-steppe Podonye. The main research methods were: technical and typological analysis and synthesis, generalization of the data of the reference monuments of the Pleistocene and Holocene boundary. In the Late Glacial period, the upper reaches of the Don and its course up to the mark of modern Voronezh were occupied by periglacial tundra, to the south all the spaces of the Don basin, including the Azov Sea, were occupied by periglacial steppes. The border of the forest-steppe and steppe zones actually corresponded to the modern one. Within the interval of the Bølling (warming, 12.4–12 thousand years BP) – the Older Dryas (cooling, 12–11.8 thousand years BP) – the Allerød (warming, 11.8–10.9 thousand years BP), the periglacial hyperzone disintegrates. The Oldest Dryas was the time of a continental climate with very harsh winters and hot summers. The Allerød was an analogue of the Bølling with a more oceanic and humid climate. At the beginning of the Holocene, climatic characteristics approached modern standards. In the Late Glacial period (21–12 cal. thousand years BP), the faunal complex was formed by mammoth, horse, bison, reindeer, wolf, arctic fox, hare, woolly rhinoceros, tur, spotted hyena, and wolverine. In the Holocene, the composition of the animal world and, accordingly, the objects of hunting/gathering change. In all the studied sites of the Final Paleolithic and the Early Mesolithic there is a horse; elk bones were found at the sites of Samotoyevka, Plautino 2, Borshchevo 2. A certain part of the diet of the population of Nazarovka were mollusks. The available data show an intermittent picture of the development of the cultures of the Final Paleolithic and the Early Mesolithic in the forest-steppe Don, with which researchers who consider the problem from a migration perspective agree. The reasons may be related both to the large number of chronological gaps between the dated monuments and to the nature of human adaptation to new conditions. For the group of monuments related to the Zamyatninsky culture, there is no reliable data on the genesis and manifestation of stable features in the industries of the final Paleolithic. The Borshchevo II industry with three cultural layers may be autochthonous in the chronological interval under consideration, but the example of this monument within the Kostenkovsko-Borshchevsky district is unique and isolated. In the local Mesolithic, the legacy of these industries does not manifest itself. In turn, the sites of the early Mesolithic of the Zimovnik culture have no genetic roots in the Final Paleolithic of the forest-steppe Podonye.