Ekven is an archaeological site in the Russian Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. It is located 30 km from the village of Uelen. Here a 2000-year-old Eskimo Cemetery from the Old Bering Sea culture was discovered by D.A. Sergeev and S.A. Arutiunov. They found graves made of wood, stone and whale bones. There were also burial of an older woman with a wooden mask.
Ekven is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in this area, competing only with Ipiutak site, Alaska, United States. The archaeological finds here produced a clearer picture of the Old Bering Sea culture. For example, much evidence of female shaman were found. Altogether Ekven has about 100 graves which are still studied by Russian archaeologist Mikhael Bronstein. [1]
The Aleuts are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska and the Russian administrative division of Kamchatka Krai.
A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as the tomb for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave. This style of burial was practiced by various seafaring cultures in Asia and Europe. Notable ship burial practices include those by the Germanic peoples, particularly by Viking Age Norsemen, as well as the pre-colonial ship burials described in the Boxer Codex in the Philippines.
A kurgan is a type of tumulus constructed over a grave, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central Asia and Eastern, Southeast, Western and Northern Europe during the 3rd millennium BC.
The Thule or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the earlier Dorset culture that had previously inhabited the region. The appellation "Thule" originates from the location of Thule in northwest Greenland, facing Canada, where the archaeological remains of the people were first found at Comer's Midden. The links between the Thule and the Inuit are biological, cultural, and linguistic.
A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea.
A tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or kurgans, and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones built for various purposes, may also originally have been a tumulus.
The Paleo-Eskimo were the peoples who inhabited the Arctic region from Chukotka in present-day Russia across North America to Greenland prior to the arrival of the modern Inuit (Eskimo) and related cultures. The first known Paleo-Eskimo cultures developed by 2500 BCE, but were gradually displaced in most of the region, with the last one, the Dorset culture, disappearing around 1500 CE.
Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body.
Uelen is a rural locality in Chukotsky District, just south of the Arctic Circle in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Far East. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 720. Located near Cape Dezhnev where the Bering Sea meets the Chukchi Sea, it is the easternmost settlement in Russia and the whole of Asia. It is located in the Western Hemisphere, but the International Date Line curves around it, so it remains in a Russian time zone (UTC+12:00). Uelen is also the closest Asian settlement to North America. It is on the northeast corner of the Uelen Lagoon, a roughly 15 by 3 kilometres east-west lagoon separated from the ocean by a sandspit. Municipally, Uelen is subordinated to Chukotsky Municipal District and is incorporated as Uelen Rural Settlement.
The Birnirk culture was a prehistoric Inuit culture of the north coast of Alaska, dating from the sixth century A.D. to the twelfth century A.D. The Birnirk culture first appeared on the American side of the Bering Strait, descending from the Old Bering Sea/Okvik culture and preceding the Thule culture; it is distinguished by its advanced harpoon and marine technology. A burial mound of the Birnirk culture was discovered in the town of Wales; 16 more have been found in Utqiagvik at the "Birnirk site," which is now a National Historic Landmark. An ancient Birnirk village has been found at present-day Ukpiaġvik.
The Paleo-Arctic Tradition is the name given by archaeologists to the cultural tradition of the earliest well-documented human occupants of the North American Arctic, which date from the period 8000–5000 BC. The tradition covers Alaska and expands far into the east, west, and the Southwest Yukon Territory.
Ancient Estonia refers to a period covering History of Estonia from the middle of the 8th millennium BC until the conquest and subjugation of the local Finnic tribes in the first quarter of the 13th century during the Teutonic and Danish Northern Crusades.
The Prehistory of Siberia is marked by several archaeologically distinct cultures. In the Chalcolithic, the cultures of western and southern Siberia were pastoralists, while the eastern taiga and the tundra were dominated by hunter-gatherers until the Late Middle Ages and even beyond. Substantial changes in society, economics and art indicate the development of nomadism in the Central Asian steppes in the first millennium BC.
The Ipiutak site is a large archaeological site at Point Hope in northwest Alaska, United States. It is one of the most important discoveries in this area, competing only with Ekven, Russia.
Arzhan is a site of early Scythian kurgan burials in the Tuva Republic, Russia, some 60 kilometers (40 mi) northwest of Kyzyl. It is on a high plateau traversed by the Uyuk River, a minor tributary of the Yenisei River, in the region of Tuva.
Stone box graves were a method of burial used by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture in the Midwestern United States and the Southeastern United States. Their construction was especially common in the Cumberland River Basin, in settlements found around present-day Nashville, Tennessee.
Part of series of articles upon Archaeology of Kosovo
Part of series of articles upon Archaeology of Kosovo
Old Bering Sea is an archaeological culture associated with a distinctive, elaborate circle and dot aesthetic style and is centered on the Bering Strait region; no site is more than 1 km from the ocean. Old Bering Sea is considered, following Henry B. Collins, the initial phase of the Northern Maritime tradition. Despite its name, several OBS sites lie on the Chukchi Sea. The temporal range of the culture is from 400 BC to possibly as late as 1300 AD. Another suggested range is from about 200 BC to 500 AD.
Bolshoy Oleny Island is an island in the Kola district of the Murmansk region of Russia. It is located in the Kola Bay of the Barents Sea, 2.5 km northeast of the city of Polyarny, and 35 km north of Murmansk.