The Baikal Archaeology Project (BAP) is an international team of scholars investigating Middle Holocene (about 9000 to 3000 years before present) hunter-gatherers of the Lake Baikal region of Siberia, Russia. The Project focuses on long-term patterns of culture change in the context of dynamic interactions with the environment. The Baikal Archaeology Project is based at the University of Alberta with Irkutsk State University being its main research partner on the Russian side. Other institutional collaborators of the project have included the University of Calgary, University of Saskatchewan, Grant MacEwan University, British Columbia Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, University of California-Davis, Cambridge University, Oxford University, University College London, University of Aberdeen, and Institutes of Geochemistry and Earth’s Crust, Russian Academy of Sciences in Irkutsk and Irkutsk State Technical University in Russia. The Baikal Archaeology Project has been extensively funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Archaeological research of the Lake Baikal region’s Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers began during the second half of the 19th century and was followed by a long period of intensive research conducted during the Soviet period by researchers such as Alexei Pavlovich Okladnikov. The Baikal Archaeology Project was formed in the mid-1990s during the time of profound political, social, and economic changes in Russia. Since then, the Baikal Archaeology Project launched an extensive multidisciplinary investigation of Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of the Baikal region. The research model involves both original fieldwork and the application of modern laboratory techniques to previously as well as recently excavated collections of archaeological materials. Much of this work is facilitated by the presence of prehistoric cemeteries with well-preserved human remains – an unusual hunter-gatherer characteristic from a global perspective. Employing many advanced research methods and the integration of diverse lines of evidence generated by mortuary archaeology, zooarchaeology, radiocarbon dating, human osteology, isotope geochemistry, ancient and modern DNA research, ethnoarchaeology, and paleoclimatic and environmental studies, the project aims to achieve an improved understanding of the cultural complexity, variability, and dynamics of the long-term culture change among past boreal foragers in the Baikal region. [1] [2]
The Middle Holocene archaeology of the Baikal region is attractive particularly owing to its wealth of well-preserved cemeteries as well as the availability of stratified habitation sites. The region also invites attention because of a unique pattern of culture change in which two periods of increased social complexity, as evidenced by large numbers of formal cemeteries dating to the Early Neolithic and the Late Neolithic–Bronze Age, are separated by a millennium-long Middle Neolithic period during which mortuary sites are entirely absent.
Period | Cemeteries | Tradition | Cal YBP |
---|---|---|---|
Late Mesolithic | Absent | Unknown | 8800-8000 |
Early Neolithic | Present | Kitoi | 8000-7200 |
Middle Neolithic | Absent | Unknown | 7200-6000 |
Late Neolithic | Present | Isakovo, Serovo | 6000-5000 |
Bronze Age | Present | Glazkovo | 5000-4000 |
The first period of social complexity is associated with the Early Neolithic Kitoi culture, while the second period relates to the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Isakovo, Serovo, and Glazkovo cultures, respectively. Since most of the current knowledge about the region’s Middle Holocene prehistory has been derived from examination of cemeteries, the Middle Neolithic, which lacks mortuary sites, does not enjoy the same level of archaeological identity as the preceding and following periods. Thus, it has often been referred to as the period of hiatus or discontinuity in the use of formal cemeteries.
Results from this research demonstrate that the discontinuity existed for as much as 1200 years and that the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Bronze Age groups, which lived in the area on either side of this hiatus, were genetically dissimilar. Further differences between these pre- and post-hiatus groups are noted with regard to dietary preferences, subsistence and land use patterns, population size and distribution, social and political relations, and worldviews. Climate and environmental change in the region also seems to coincide with this period of discontinuity.
The two main research goals the Baikal Archaeology Project are:
(1) To define the biocultural and environmental parameters of the middle Holocene hunter-gatherer adaptations; and (2) To explain the documented spatial and temporal cultural variability.
A substantial amount of research conducted by the Baikal Archaeology Project is dedicated to the comprehensive examination of several collections of human remains excavated in the Lake Baikal region either by the Project, or by earlier Russian scholars.
Excavated | Cemetery | Region | Age | No. of graves | No. of burials |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Prior to BAP | Lokomotiv | Angara Valley | Early Neolithic | 60 | 106 |
By BAP | Shamanka II | South Baikal | Early Neolithic, Bronze Age | 111 | 189 |
Prior to BAP | Ust'-Ida | Angara Valley | Late Neolithic, Bronze Age | 60 | 72 |
By BAP | Kurma XI | Baikal Little Sea | Early Neolithic, Bronze Age | 27 | 23 |
By BAP | Khuzir-Nuge XIV | Baikal Little Sea | Bronze Age | 79 | 89 |
The work of the Baikal Archaeology Project is organized within five research modules – Archaeology, Human Bioarchaeology, Human Genetics, Ethnoarchaeology, and Paleoenvironment – each addressing the Project’s general objectives with a different, but complementary, methodology. The Archaeology, Human Bioarchaeology, and Human Genetics modules supply the primary data on the Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers, while the Paleoenvironment and Ethnoarchaeology modules provide a broad interpretive framework for the bioarchaeological data.
The Archaeology Module examines development, use, and spatial organization of the region’s numerous hunter-gatherer cemeteries, mortuary protocols, social and political organization, migrations and mobility patterns, as well as the overall spatiotemporal variability in hunter-gatherer adaptations. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] Zooarchaeologists study hunting and fishing strategies based on faunal remains from archaeological sites. Of particular interest is documenting past exploitation of aquatic resources (including Nerpa, the freshwater seal of Lake Baikal) for which the region is famous. [12] [13] [14] [15]
Bioarchaeological research provides information about health, paleodemography and activity patterns [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] Bone chemistry permits a much better resolution of the spatial and temporal variability of diet and subsistence, which are also very important additional measures of mobility and social organization. [22] [23] [24]
The ancient mtDNA material obtained from human remains excavated from the Baikal region’s prehistoric cemeteries has demonstrated the genetic discontinuity between the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic to Bronze Age peoples, the genetic similarity between the latter two, and has revealed new aspects of social and political complexity among the Early Neolithic groups. [25] [26] Examination of modern DNA materials in the context of the ancient DNA information allows assessment of the genetic history of native Siberians. [27] [28] [29]
Paleoenvironmental research, which involves both extensive fieldwork and computer modeling techniques, has identified a period of climatic change affecting the Baikal region that coincided chronologically with the end of the Early Neolithic Kitoi culture. [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] While this change is believed to be the most significant in the region's entire Holocene climate history, it appears that its impact may have been greatest on the semi-arid areas south and east of Lake Baikal rather than on the more forested west and north.
Ethnographic and ethnohistoric research focuses upon how indigenous Buriat, Evenki, and Sakha peoples have adapted to boreal environments in general, and its coastal, alpine, and steppe niches in particular. [38] The module has also discovered, in 11 Siberian cities, a series of documents from the 1926 Polar Census in Siberia, which is the richest dataset on boreal hunter-gatherers yet known. [39] [40]
Researchers of the Archaeology, Paleoenvironment, and Ethnoarchaeology modules have conducted intensive fieldwork in many locations around Lake Baikal. Archaeologists excavated the cemeteries of Shamanka, Khuzhir-Nuge XIV, and Kurma XI, all located on the shores of Lake Baikal. This work expanded the existing collection of Middle Holocene burials in the region by c. 300 individuals, thus creating new research opportunities. Excavations were also carried out at the stratified habitation sites of Gorelyi Les in the Angara valley and Sagan-Zaba and Bugul’deika coves on Lake Baikal, providing archaeological data covering the entire Holocene. In conjunction with these excavations, the Baikal Archaeology Project organized archaeological field schools which attracted participants from Russia, Canada, USA, United Kingdom, and Poland.
Cemeteries
Habitation Sites
The Paleonvironment module conducted fieldwork at numerous locations around Lake Baikal including its western shores (lakes Shara and Khall), the valleys of the Lena (Basovo), Selenga (Burdukovo), and Kirenga (Krasnyi Yar) rivers, the Tunka Valley (lake Arky) west of Baikal, and northern Mongolia. This work involved detailed examination of Holocene lake core records (pollen, diatom and macrofossils) and stratified floodplain sediments for high resolution paleoenvironmental reconstructions.
The Ethnoarchaeology module organized field research with Evenki and Sakha hunters and reindeer herders at sites in the Bodaibo District (Irkutsk oblast’), Zhuia River Valley, Severobaikalsk District (Buriat Republic), and villages of Essei and Olenok. This fieldwork is designed to provide the Baikal Archaeology Project with modern examples of subsistence action in specific lacustrian and riverine landscapes, characteristic also of the Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer groups.
The Baikal Archaeology Project has organized three international conferences (in Canada, Russia and Scotland), several conference sessions, and dozens of workshops and seminars. Project scholars and graduate students have produced numerous journalism papers, doctoral dissertations and masters’ theses, as well as five monographs under its Northern Hunter-Gatherers Research Series, published by Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press, University of Alberta. The most important publications are listed below.
The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymously, especially for outside northern Europe, and for the corresponding period in the Levant and Caucasus. The Mesolithic has different time spans in different parts of Eurasia. It refers to the final period of hunter-gatherer cultures in Europe and the Middle East, between the end of the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution. In Europe it spans roughly 15,000 to 5,000 BP; in the Middle East roughly 20,000 to 10,000 BP. The term is less used of areas farther east, and not at all beyond Eurasia and North Africa.
The 6th millennium BC spanned the years 6000 BC to 5001 BC. It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological and anthropological analysis. The only exceptions are the felling dates for some construction timbers from Neolithic wells in Central Europe.
The 9th millennium BC spanned the years 9000 BC to 8001 BC. In chronological terms, it is the first full millennium of the current Holocene epoch that is generally reckoned to have begun by 9700 BC. It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological and anthropological analysis, or by radiometric dating.
The Evenki, also known as the Evenks and formerly as the Tungus, are a Tungusic people of North Asia. In Russia, the Evenki are recognised as one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North, with a population of 38,396. In China, the Evenki form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognised by the People's Republic of China, with a population of 30,875. There are 537 Evenki in Mongolia, called Khamnigan in the Mongolian language.
The Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture, in short TRB or TBK, was an archaeological culture in north-central Europe. It developed as a technological merger of local neolithic and mesolithic techno-complexes between the lower Elbe and middle Vistula rivers. These predecessors were the (Danubian) Lengyel-influenced Stroke-ornamented ware culture (STK) groups/Late Lengyel and Baden-Boleráz in the southeast, Rössen groups in the southwest and the Ertebølle-Ellerbek groups in the north. The TRB introduced farming and husbandry as major food sources to the pottery-using hunter-gatherers north of this line.
Prehistoric Thailand may be traced back as far as 1,000,000 years ago from the fossils and stone tools found in northern and western Thailand. At an archaeological site in Lampang, northern Thailand Homo erectus fossils, Lampang Man, dating back 1,000,000 – 500,000 years, have been discovered. Stone tools have been widely found in Kanchanaburi, Ubon Ratchathani, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Lopburi. Prehistoric cave paintings have also been found in these regions, dating back 10,000 years.
This timeline of prehistory covers the time from the appearance of Homo sapiens approximately 315,000 years ago in Africa to the invention of writing, over 5,000 years ago, with the earliest records going back to 3,200 BC. Prehistory covers the time from the Paleolithic to the beginning of ancient history.
The Kiffian culture is a prehistoric industry, or domain, that existed between approximately 8,000 BC and 6,000 BC in the Sahara Desert, during the African humid period referred to as the Neolithic Subpluvial. Human remains from this culture were found in 2000 AD at a site known as Gobero, located in Niger in the Ténéré Desert. The site is known as the largest and earliest burial place of Stone Age people in the Sahara desert.
Okunev culture, also known as Okunevo culture, was a south Siberian archaeological culture of pastoralists from the early Bronze Age dated from the end of the 3rd millennium BC to the early 2nd millennium BC in the Minusinsk Basin on the middle and upper Yenisei. It was formed from the local Neolithic Siberian forest cultures, who also showed evidence of admixture from Western Steppe Herders and pre-existing Ancient North Eurasians.
The Slab-grave culture is an archaeological culture of Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Early Iron Age Mongolia. The Slab-grave culture formed one of the primary ancestral components of the succeeding Xiongnu, as revealed by genetic evidence. The ethnogenesis of Turkic peoples and the modern Mongolian people is, at least partially, linked to the Slab-grave culture by historical and archaeological evidence and further corroborated by genetic research on Slab-grave remains.
Bolshemys culture is an Eneolithic culture of foot hunters in the Altai mountains in the region amid the rivers Katun, Biya, Irtysh and Ob in South Siberia. Eneolithic monuments of the steppe Altai were discovered in the foothill zone in the 1970s by B.H. Kadikov, but for a time they remained unrecognized and were classed as Neolithic. The culture has about 50 known monuments with Eneolithic material. Only one cemetery, Large Cape, is known so far, and the culture was named for it.
Afontova Gora is a Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Siberian complex of archaeological sites located on the left bank of the Yenisey River near the city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Afontova Gora has cultural and genetic links to the people from Mal'ta–Buret'. The complex was first excavated in 1884 by Ivan Savenkov.
In archaeogenetics, the term Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) is the name given to an ancestral component that represents the lineage of the people of the Mal'ta–Buret' culture and populations closely related to them, such as the Upper Paleolithic individuals from Afontova Gora in Siberia. Genetic studies also revealed that the ANE are closely related to the remains of the preceding Yana culture, which were named Ancient North Siberians (ANS). Ancient North Eurasians are predominantly of West Eurasian ancestry who arrived in Siberia via the "northern route", but also derive a significant amount of their ancestry from an East Eurasian source, having arrived to Siberia via the "southern route".
In archaeogenetics, western hunter-gatherer is a distinct ancestral component of modern Europeans, representing descent from a population of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who scattered over western, southern and central Europe, from the British Isles in the west to the Carpathians in the east, following the retreat of the ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum. It is closely associated and sometimes considered synonymous with the concept of the Villabruna cluster, named after Ripari Villabruna cave in Italy, known from the terminal Pleistocene of Europe, which is largely ancestral to later WHG populations.
The Yeniseian people refers either to the modern or ancient Siberian populations speaking Yeniseian languages. Despite evidence pointing to the historical presence of Yeniseian populations throughout Central Siberia and Northern Mongolia, only the Ket and Yugh people survive today. The modern Yeniseians live along the eastern middle stretch of the Yenisei River in Northern Siberia. According to the 2021 census, there were 1,088 Kets and 7 Yugs in Russia.
The Lothagam North Pillar Site, registered as GeJi9, is an archaeological site at Lothagam on the west side of Lake Turkana in Kenya dating to the Pastoral Neolithic and the Holocene. It is a communal cemetery, built between 3000 BCE and 2300 BCE by the region's earliest herders as rainfall in the area decreased and Lake Turkana receded. It is thought to be eastern Africa's largest and earliest monumental cemetery.
The prehistory of West Africa timespan from the earliest human presence in the region to the emergence of the Iron Age in West Africa. West African populations were considerably mobile and interacted with one another throughout the population history of West Africa. Acheulean tool-using archaic humans may have dwelled throughout West Africa since at least between 780,000 BP and 126,000 BP. During the Pleistocene, Middle Stone Age peoples, who dwelled throughout West Africa between MIS 4 and MIS 2, were gradually replaced by incoming Late Stone Age peoples, who migrated into West Africa as an increase in humid conditions resulted in the subsequent expansion of the West African forest. West African hunter-gatherers occupied western Central Africa earlier than 32,000 BP, dwelled throughout coastal West Africa by 12,000 BP, and migrated northward between 12,000 BP and 8000 BP as far as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania.
In archaeogenetics, the term Ancient Northeast Asian (ANA), also known as Amur ancestry, is the name given to an ancestral component that represents the lineage of the hunter-gatherer people of the 7th-4th millennia before present, in far eastern Siberia, Mongolia and the Baikal regions. They are inferred to have diverged from Ancient East Asians about 24kya ago, and are represented by several ancient human specimens found in archaeological excavations east of the Altai Mountains. They are a sub-group of the Ancient Northern East Asians (ANEA).
In archaeogenetics, the term Ancient Paleo-Siberian is the name given to an ancestral component that represents the lineage of the hunter-gatherer people of the 15th-10th millennia before present, in northern and northeastern Siberia. The Ancient Paleo-Siberian population is thought to have arisen from an Ancient East Asian lineage, which diverged from other East Asian populations sometimes between 26kya to 36kya, and merged with Ancient North Eurasians (ANE) sometimes between 20kya to 25kya. The ANE themselves are described as the "result of a palaeolithic admixture" between ancient West Eurasians and ancient East Eurasians. The source for the East Asian component among Ancient Paleo-Siberians is to date best represented by Ancient Northern East Asian populations from the Amur region older than 13,000 years, such as AR19K and AR14K, and before the Devil's Cave Ancient Northeast Asian specimens.
In archaeogenetics, the term Ancient Northern East Asian (ANEA), also known as Northern East Asian (NEA), is used to summarize the related ancestral components that represent the Ancient Northern East Asian peoples, extending from the Baikal region to the Yellow River and the Qinling-Huaihe Line in present-day central China. They are inferred to have diverged from Ancient Southern East Asians (ASEA) around 20,000 to 26,000 BCE.
Note: Bold font indicates BAP project members.
defended over the course of BAP