Strategies of using lithic raw materials in layer 12 of the Kazachka site (Kansk-Rybinsk depression)

With the accumulation of new evidence and new radiocarbon dates, the problem of the Mesolithic as a separate chronological stage in the Baikal Asia becomes again an open issue. Accordingly, the exploration of multi-layered Late Pleistocene - Early Holocene sites becomes highly relevant. The article discusses the assemblages obtained during the excavations at the site of Kazachka I in the 1970s and 1980s. Scholars have repeatedly addressed the evidence from that site, yet not all assemblages have been published. Strategies of using lithic raw materials by the Early Holocene fishers-hunters have been analyzed using the lithic assemblage from layer 12, which consisted of the artifacts made of flint, chalcedony, and diabase. Primary reduction was represented by the cores made of chalcedony and flint, blades and bladelets generally made of flint and chalcedony, and flakes made of diabase. The toolkit includes the tools on laminar spalls made of flint and chalcedony as well as blades and massive tools were made on flakes of diabase and flint. The research has resulted in establishing the main features of using lithic raw materials and producing tools in the assemblage from layer 12. Diversified strategies of the use of raw materials indicate that diabase blanks were brought to the site where they were actively processed into tools. The complete technological sequences of the flint and chalcedony reduction have been reconstructed. At the beginning of the eighth millennium BP, the estuary of the Kazachka River was a place of intensive and relatively long-term habitation by the ancient humans who possessed sophisticated and diversified strategies of using lithic raw materials.