Ust-Tartas-1 early Neolithic site and its cultural and chronological interpretation

The article describes the new Early Neolithic site from the Baraba forest-steppe, which contains the complexes of flat-bottomed pottery. The constructional features of the structures and inventory make it possible to view the newly discovered site as a typical complex of the Early Neolithic, probably intended for procuring and initial processing offish. By analogy with the materials of the Tartas-1 site, the date of the new site is within the 7 th millennium BC. A series of radiocarbon dates was obtained for a similar complex from the Tartas-1 site, which made it possible to attribute it to the beginning of the Neolithic and to revise the existing historical and cultural interpretation. The origin of flat-bottomed pottery in the taiga and forest-steppe regions of the West Siberian Plain should be regarded as an autochthonous phenomenon, convergent for this region. A new definition of the Baraba Neolithic culture is proposed for the sites of Tartas-1, Ust-Tartas-1, and Avtodrom-2/2 with flat-bottomed pottery.