Ulakhan-Botuobuya II Early Holocene – Bronze Age site in the Mirny District of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia): review of 2024 excavations

In June - September 2024, the Vilyui archaeological expedition of the IAET SB RAS carried out rescue archaeological excavations at the Ulakhan-Botuobuya II site located in the south of the Mirny District of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). During the 2024field season, an excavation area of5 897 sq. m was studied at the Ulakhan-Botuobuya II site, and 8 534 items were recorded. The archaeological material is mostly recorded in a redeposited state due to strong cryogenic deformations of the sedimentation layer. When opening cultural layers in the plan as well as in stratigraphy, numerous pronounced solifluction and fluvial (cracks, "flow", "compression/squeezing", erosion, siltation, etc.) processes were recorded, leading to repeated displacement, "erosion" of lithological layers between them. Moreover, intensive illuvial processes also affected the nature of cultural layers. Culturebearing desposits and their underlayers are those where the substances taken out from the upper soil layers accumulate, leading to dramatic changes in the layer appearance. Most part of the excavation pit contains the culture-bearing layer represented by a solid compression layer containing archeological material from various ages (combined I), from the Early Holocene to the Bronze Age, while locally and in the central part of the excavation (900 sq. m), it divides in two: culture-bearing layer Il-the Sumnagin culture (10,000 to 6000years BC); culture-bearing I - materials of the Middle Paleolithic culture, Belkachi (final 4th to 3rd millennium BC), of the Late Paleolithic culture, Ymyyakhtakhsaya culture (final 3rd to 2nd millennium BC), as well as of the Bronze Age associated with the Ust-Milskaya culture (14th to 4th centuries BC).