ST.PETERSBURG THE SHORTEST WAY TO THE ARCTIC

8000 Years Old

Olga Bobrova

      "The spring of 1989 was late and cold. The site for future excavations had bared itself from under the snow as late as the end of June, and I experienced severe disappointment. Before my eyes were the slopes of a frozen hollow covered with seemingly fresh bones, mainly those of deer and bears, with pieces and chips of driftwood. It may have seemed that all of it was left here not more than 200 or 300 years ago. The greater was my joy when the excavations began. Half a year later I waited with eager anticipation for the results of the actual date. Radiocarbon analyses confirmed that the remains at the site on Zhokhov Island in the East Siberian Sea at 76° North latitude were 8 000 years old…"

      This is how Vladimir Pitulko, an Arctic Regions archaeologist and a scientist at the Institute of History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, began his story.

      "This isn't a profession", believes my conversationalist, "This is a way of life. Professional suitability is defined by the desire to live such a life, constantly moving from one place to another and overcoming the difficulties, of which there are plenty in the Far North".

      He has known such a life since childhood. His father worked in Magadan as a geologist and he used to take his son on expeditions from the time he was 10 years old. His first teacher of geology was his neighbour, Nikolai Dikov, a prominent palaeological explorer of the Northeast. It was he, who first told Volodya about the unique petroglyphs on Chukotka, which, as an adult, he was able to see with his own eyes on an expedition last year. Pitulko thinks that he was very fortunate with his teachers. In St. Petersburg, he was a student and a colleague of Leonid Khlobystin; in Yakutsk he met Yuri Machanov and Svetlana Fedoseeva, to whom Russian science owes its basic archaeological knowledge of the North. Since 1975, Pitulko has taken part in expeditions in Kolyma and Kamchatka, in Chukotka and on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, on the Wrangel and the Vaigach islands, on the Taimyr Peninsula and in the Big Land Tundra, along the Russian North from the Yamal Peninsula eastward, in Alaska and on Gottland Island.
      For Pitulko, Zhokhov Island is yet another gift of fortune. It was Boris Vilkitsky, a distinguished hydrographer and geodesist, who, in 1914, named the island in memory of one of the members of his expedition around the Arctic Ocean who died en route.
      Zhokhov Island is small. It is 11 km from north to south and 9 km from west to east. It is one of five small islands of the De Long Archipelago in the group of Novosibirsk Islands. Its natural conditions are severe and its flora and fauna are very scarce. In summer, its silence and tranquility may only be disturbed by noisy gatherings of birds. Nearby, Vilkitsky Island looms on the horizon. When these islands were discovered, they were uninhabited and the natives from the coastal districts never spoke about them.
      Nowhere else in northern latitudes have such findings been discovered as those which have been excavated on Zhokhov Island. Relics like leather, fur, wood and even stones usually don't come down to explorers because they deteriorate as time goes by. But here, due to the severe Arctic climate and the permafrost, the findings have been wonderfully preserved. Like in a fridge, "the living stone age" has ideally survived.
      Pitulko thinks that the Zhokhov site was a hunting camp, situated within a few days' walk from the aboriginals' permanent place of residence. Most likely, it was the same people who used to come here every hunting season - from March to September. They lived here, went hunting, made tools, household utensils and produced the materials needed to make them. Some of these things broke, got lost, and were thrown away or simply left behind, as they had not enough time to utilize or to finish them. Nowadays, 8 000 years later, all of these items are being carefully explored by archaeologists.
      A scoop made from driftwood; a sewing needle made from bone with a neat eye used for threading a thin fibre; a well-preserved bird's feather from a feather arrow; a scrape and a knife made from chips of a mammoth's tusk; a piece of a basket and a few pieces of a dog-sled, which look very much the same as the ones used today; a few adzes and small axes made from polished stone; an ice pick from a mammoth's tusk used for breaking ice or earth which has become ruddy from lying in peat water for such a long time … One experiences strange feelings when holding these items.
      Pitulko remarks that jewellery was scarce.
      However, a prismatic shaped kernel made of chalcedony is proof that man had already mastered a rather fine technology. The kernel served as a work piece for future tools: it was split into very thin pieces (1,5 mm wide), which were inserted into special slots made of stone or wooden materials, and they turned out as sharp edges for a knife or a spear. This very economical way of utilizing scarce materials required good skills and competence. It is not clear what made an ancient man settle so far in the North when, apparently, even the Mediterranean region was not densely populated at that time.
      "Man is like gas - it occupies all the space available", Pitulko explains.
      The findings on Zhokhov Island fit in very well with the concept of Beringia, an enormous land, which used to be on the territory of the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea and join Asia with America. It was formed during the coldest period in the last glacial epoch, when, as a result of the formation of ice masses, the Polar Ocean's level dropped by 100-120 metres. Later, about 15 000 years ago, the global thaw began, which annihilated Beringia. Its greater part was flooded, while its elevated parts remained in the form of the Novosibirsk and other islands.
      The findings on Zhokhov Island testify to the fact that people used to reach their hunting camps by land and that they hunted not for the sea animals, but for the continental ones, like deer and polar bears. At that time, the islands were not yet separated from the mainland.
      This year, Vladimir Pitulko has come back to Zhokhov Island as a member of the Russian-American expedition. He is hoping, if luck will have it, to explore the big islands of the archipelago, first and foremost, the New Siberia. He is convinced that there are still many chances to discover a lot of new and surprising things about the past.