The Medvedka Settlement

The Medvedka settlement is a multi-layered archaeological site located on the border of Tomsk and Kemerovo regions. In historical and cultural terms this territory was a border area between the forest-steppe and taiga. The settlement was discovered by V.A. Ryabtsev in 1977. The researcher collected a large amount of items, including a preserved vessel. These finds allowed him to hypothesise that apart from the settlement complex there may have also been a necropolis in this territory. Thus in 1978 V.A. Ryabtsev organised further excavations of the site which led to the creation of a collection of over 2000 items. The borders of the Medvedka settlement have not so far been established, and given that the finds were scattered over a large area, one can assume that the territory of the settlement is indeed vast. The Medvedka collection is presented to the scientific community for the first time. Most of it is comprised of stone items. These had been processed with the use of different techniques, among them - pressure flaking, grinding, and drilling. Many cultural and chronological analogies can be drawn when studying the final products and waste in the stone production. In the collection, there are also a small but sufficient number of ceramic items that allowed us to conduct a historical and cultural analysis and to date the site back to the Neolithic Period, and more specifically, the Early Iron Age. By means of analysing the ornamental and technical characteristics of this ceramics we were able to study the patterns of ethno-cultural interactions between the population of taiga and the forest-steppe population over a long period of time. Some unique finds accidentally discovered in the settlement are of particular interest; their features give room for cultural and chronological interpretations. These are a zoomorphic sharpening stone with a snake head imprinted on the end face of it and a whole ceramic vessel. The former is an excellent example of the ancient art of Western Siberia, and the latter has an unusual ‘Y’-shaped stamp on it as well as an ornamental grouping of holes that allow date it to the period in-between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The results of the collection analysis revealed the special role of the Medvedka site in the historical and cultural relationships between the taiga and the forest-steppe population. Further research on this territory of intersection of historical and cultural ties seems much promising as it may enable us to recreate the ethno-cultural history of Western Siberia across a wide chronological spectrum.

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