Materials of excavations of the Khatyngnaakh II multilayer site on the Middle Vilyui in 2024

The article provides the first results of rescue archaeological excavations at the Khatyngnaakh II multilayer site, located in the impact zone of the Vilyui HPP-3 reservoir. The site was discovered by PAE and investigated by N.V. Antipina in 1979-1982. Excavations were complicated by the presence of permafrost soils, high water level, and disturbance of cultural deposits by postsedimentation processes. The excavations revealed finds and objects related to human habitation in the area during the Upper Paleolithic or Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, Medieval to ethnographic modernity. The earliest finds include individual bones of large mammals of the mammoth complex and clusters of stone artifacts in a layer of dark-gray sandy loam at a depth of 4-5 meters from the modern surface. Most of the cultural deposits, reflecting the most active period of development of the territory, are associated with a parallel-layered pack of dark-gray sandy loam and yellow sand. They date to the Early Neolithic period and are identified by a large number of fragments of ceramic vessels with "reticulated " ornamentation associated with the Syalakh culture. The next period of settlement is associated with rare Middle Neolithic finds. The only burial found at the site, analogous to the known burials of the Belkachi culture, belongs to this period. The habitation periods of the last four thousand years are associated with the layers of sandy loam of the upper horizons without clear and distinct boundaries. The Late Neolithic is represented by several fragments of dishes with the "waffle" ornamentation and clusters of stone and bone artifacts typical of the Ymyyakhtakh culture. The Bronze Age is expressed in a series of vessels with three main types of ornamentation-smoothed rolls, smooth-walled with hemispherical indentations, as well as tiered compositions of rows of pearls, dimples and smoothed rolls. To the later periods of settlement of this territory belong traces of metallurgical production, as well as household products of the 19th-20th centuries.