Long-distance circulation of exotic teeth and non-local minerals in forested northeastern Europe 4th millennium BC

The Sakhtysh archaeological complex is situated in the Upper Volga area and is one of the main locations of hunter-fisher-gatherer archaeology in the forested parts of central European Russia with eleven stratified multiperiod settlements and camp-sites spatially overlapping with cemeteries and adjoining so-called ritual activity areas. The chronological framework of the complex covers a period between the Early Mesolithic (the 9th millennium BC) and the Early Iron Age (circa 600 BC–500 AD), but the most intensive occupation takes place during the Lyalovo and Volosovo culture phases from the 5th to the early 3rd millennium BC. This article gives an overview of non-local materials recovered at the Sakhtysh sites and presents their find contexts. The majority of artefacts, considered to be imported or “exotic”, come from burials or “ritual activity areas”. Exotic items include ornaments and tools made of different raw materials, amber, various stones (serpentine, rock crystal, metatuff) and an animal species not native to the region (marmot). The geographic origin of these materials takes different directions within a radius of nearly 1,000 km from Sakhtysh: the Baltic Sea coast (amber), the shores of Lake Onega (metatuff), the Ural Mountains (rock crystal, serpentine) and the forest-steppe and steppe areas of western Eurasia (marmot). Most of the artefacts are readymade objects and can be classified as ornaments (pendants, beads, rings, buttons). They have been interpreted as decorations, most likely attached to the clothing or used as personal ornaments. In the domestic contexts, only the Russian-Karelian tools made of metatuff are commonly encountered. In the burial contexts, the distribution of non-local materials shows certain patterns indicating either temporal differences in the use of different parts of the sites, the specific status of the deceased and the social group that performed the burial, or specific events during which these imported goods may have played a particular role. The circulation of diverse materials in the forest zone illustrates the rising complexity and intensification of contacts between the hunter-fisher-gatherer communities of the 4th millennium BC. Extensive exchange and communication networks exploiting the natural waterways made it possible for certain materials and artefacts, some even produced in specialized workshops, to be transmitted over great distances between the Baltic Sea and the Urals. In this context, the Sakhtysh complex can be regarded as a border point in the distribution of various exotic materials: east from Sakhtysh, amber finds are rare, and west, marmot incisors and serpentine are uncommon.