Microlithic Sites in the Asiatic USSR

Abstract Microlithic cultures of the steppe and desert zone of Asia include the Kel'teminar of the Aral Sea region and comparable cultures in Kazakhstan, Turkmenia, Trans-Baikal, Mongolia and China. This microlithic industry is characterized not by the size of the tools, but by the use of blades rather than flakes for the manufacture of stone tools. The prismatic core, often small and pencil-shaped, is very common; bifacial retouch is rare. The microliths are consistently found in association with pottery and bifacially worked projectile points of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of the third and second millennia B.C. The tendency of Soviet archaeologists to seek the ethnic affiliations of archaeological complexes may explain the considerable regional variation in pottery and stone tool inventories, but adjustment to environment is a more likely explanation for the wide-spread occurrence of the basic features of the microlithic industry. A way of life based on migratory hunting of small game and collecting developed as a result of refinements in missile weapons which included the bow and arrow. These developments can be correlated with the introduction of the microlithic blade technology. This way of life and the use of microliths survived in the steppe and desert areas, but in the regions to the south where farming developed the microliths were rapidly replaced by heavy tools such as hoes and pestles, and in the northern forests harpoons, fishhooks, and heavy wood-working tools indicate a shift to a more sedentary life based on intensive fishing. The widespread microlithic survivals in northern Asia demonstrate similar subsistence patterns in similar ecological zones rather than basic ethnic unity. Suggestions concerning origins, historical and cultural ties, and possible population movements are gradually emerging from detailed studies of the boundaries between the microlithic zone and the pottery and forest areas as well as from broader comparative analyses.