Blade component in the archaeological collection of the Domashneye Ozero site (Central Kamchatka)

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of materials from the Domashneye Ozero site, which is a key site of the Late Neolithic Tarya culture in Kamchatka. Recent fieldwork has revealed a stratigraphically earlier Mesolithic complex with the characteristic blade technology, lying below the horizon of Tarya artefacts. Based on these data as well as the analysis of published and archival sources, a hypothesis was formulated about probable mixing of Tarya and Mesolithic materials within the sunken dwellings investigated by N.N. Dikov in the 1960s. This hypothesis was verified by a detailed technical and typological analysis of the blade component from early excavations. The study identified 65 artefacts that were reliably correlated with the production of blades and bladelets from prismatic and subprismatic cores. It was found that the proportion of the blade component in archaeological collections of dwellings and surface finds varied from 2.0 to 23.44 %. The identified blade blanks were used to make tanged points, burins, and insets probably used to equip slotted tools. The Domashneye Ozero blade complex shows complete parallels with the Mesolithic assemblages of the Ushki sites and the sites in the valleys of the Anavgai andRazdelniy Rivers as well as more northern sites of Kamchatka. The results suggest that similar mixing of materials from different periods associated with the construction of pit houses may be characteristic of other sites of the Tarya and Old Itelmen cultures of Kamchatka, which significantly corrects the established ideas of the cultural and chronological attribution of these complexes.