Historical and Cultural Processes Trend in Forest-Steppe of Western Siberia

Physical and geographic peculiarities of Western Siberia are plain landscape (the largest lowland in the world), latitudes of landscape zones, limited amount and, in some regions, absence of stone material for tool production, absence of material for non-ferrous metal production. During the early stages of the ancient history, these conditions restrained the populating the Western Siberia territories. Mechanisms and processes of adaptation created the historical and cultural singularity of the territory of Western Siberia which individualizes it among the other regions of North Asia. Another peculiarity is associated with the development of Western Siberia archaeological science. It was based on academic centers of Moscow and Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg), and since 1960-s of the XX century, Novosibirsk as well; organization of local centers in universities and specialized higher education institutions; scientific schools. The new level of archaeological knowledge allows arguing that on Asian territory of Russia, Western Siberia stands apart in terms of historical and cultural content, its diversity and processes dynamics. On the other hand, it allows considering the archaeological cultures development, their interactions in a different way; allows finding out the general and local trends of historical and cultural development in the large chronological limits and within different landscape zones. This work deals with a research aimed to solve this issue. The cartography of the Early Holocenic findings of Western Siberia, their absolute chronology allow to conclude that the populating of the Western Siberian lowland was dispersive and depended on changing natural environment and necessary resources. Neolithic Age demonstrates another state of historical and cultural development. At that time the whole territory of Western Siberia was populated, the archaeological cultures were created, the population passed to sedentary lifestyle. During the transition period between ages, historical development was quite unstable. During the Bronze Age, the situation stabilized. Anyway, Seymino-Turbino phenomena can be considered as manifestation of globalization. Andronovo culture had a globalization element as well. During the Late Bronze age was the time of cultural traditions developing from Ural to Yenissei. This changed during the transition from Bronze to Iron Age. In Scythian time the trend to global development had been revived. Thus, on the territory of forest-steppe of Western Siberia, the trend of historical and cultural processes had a cyclic nature.

Keywords

Authors

References