New data on dating Eneolithic and Bronze Age archaeological sites with asbestos pottery in the territory of northwest Russia

The article presents the results of the radiocarbon dating of samples from archaeological contexts of ancient settlements in Karelia, Leningrad, Vologda, and Murmansk regions, obtained with the AMS (accelerated mass-spectrometry) method. Using asbestos as a temper in clay mass for making pottery is a unique cultural phenomenon of the ancient population of Northern Europe. Several types of pottery with asbestos temper that differ in ornamentation, morphology, and making technology and date to the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age are known in the north-western part of Russia. Thus, several culturally and probably ethnically different groups of people lived in this territory. Studies on the specifics of the cultural interaction and intercultural influences of these groups are possible only with the well-developed chronology of pottery types development, which determines the relevance of the conducted research. The article is the first publication of archaeological materials from the contexts that provided the radiocarbon dated samples.