Archaeological survey on the right bank of the Bolshaya Ob river in 2020

The article describes the archaeological survey in the basin of the Lower Ob River (Shuryshkarsky District, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug) in 2020. The right bank of the Bolshaya Ob River was explored in three main areas: in the vicinity of Gorki/Kushevat and Khashgort villages, and near the mouth of the Langivozhyogan River. In total, 27 test pits were made and four stratigraphic profiles of bank scarps were unearthed revealing subaerial and subaqueous sediments of the Late Neopleistocene. Paleontological evidence in situ in the sediments of the secondfloodplain terrace was found in three out of 12 test pits in the vicinity of Kushevat village on the right bank of the Kushevatskaya channel. All faunal remains (29 specimens) mainly belonged to mammoth and reindeer, and were found in the same lithological body in the area of about 1 000 m2. A reindeer horn and fragment of a mammoth tubular bone showed possible traces of anthropogenic impact. Comparison of the sections with available data from the Gorki-Kushevat-Lophari area makes it possible to suggest that the age of the Kushevat layer was ca 50-35 kyr BP. Thus, material evidence associated with the Paleolithic population was found for the first time in situ so far in the north, on the Bolshaya Ob River, in 2020. New evidence suggests that the early paleomigration to the Northern Ob River basin from the Urals began in the Upper Paleolithic in the latitudinal direction.