Storage pit for fish fermentation at the Tartas-1 site, the Baraba neolithic culture

The article presents the results obtained by the Western Siberian Team of the Northern Asian Integrated Expedition in 2021 during the field works at the Tartas-1 site in Novosibirsk Region. Another object of the Early Neolithic was discovered on the edge of the second terrace above the floodplain at the Tartas-1 site. Complexes of similar pits and individual pits were investigated earlier, in 2015-2016. Settlement structures and system of utility pits were located compactly along the eastern edge of the burial ground terrace and were fully studied. Flat-bottomed pottery with distinctive ornamentation, and bone and stone artifacts have made it possible to raise the question on identifying a new Baraba Neolithic culture in the region. A series of similar pits have been found in the Baraba forest-steppe before. During the study, over twenty radiocarbon dates were obtained, which has made it possible to attribute the sites of this culture to the Early Neolithic, dating it within the seventh millennium BC. In the season of 2021, a pit with typical features of the Early Neolithic objects was explored. Its depth was over 2 m; diameter was 2 m; filling was variegated with underlying black layers (remnants offish preservation) and their subsidence. The filling of the pit contained a number of bone and stone items which corresponded to the items found at the site before. Interlayers filled with fish scales and small unidentifiable fragments of animal bones have been found. This appears to have been a clearly stable economic practice among the carriers of the Baraba Early Neolithic culture, which was associated with procurement and preservation offish supplies for future use. Such objects are extremely rare and of great scholarly interest.