Siberia, Prehistoric Reference library
Wm. Roger Powers
The Oxford Companion To Archaeology (2 ed.)
..., Prehistoric Pebble tool complexes discovered in the Amur Basin (Filimoshki, Kumara I, and Ust’-Tu), the Altai (Ulalinka), and the Lena Basin (Diring Yuriakh) have been attributed to the Lower Paleolithic (Middle or Lower Pleistocene). There is no consensus as to the age of these assemblages, and in the case of Diring Yuriakh, estimates in excess of a million years have been proposed. Nothing is known about which humans were responsible for these sites or how they subsisted. Mousterian (Middle Paleolithic) sites are confined to the Altai Mountains (e.g.,...
Siberia
‘Venus of Willendorf’ Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of Art (3 ed.)
...of Willendorf’ ( Naturhistorisches Mus., Vienna ) . A prehistoric limestone figurine of a naked, faceless, obese woman, discovered at Willendorf, Austria, in 1908 . It is 11 cm (4¼ in) high (small enough to hold in the hand) and is generally dated to about 30,000 bc . There are traces of red colouring on the stone. More than 100 such prehistoric ‘Venus’ figures have been discovered, in places ranging from Italy to Siberia, but this is far and away the most famous of them, for whereas the others tend to be very heavily stylized, here there is an...
ivory Quick reference
The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (5 ed.)
... A hard, smooth, creamy white substance obtained from the tusks or teeth of certain animals, widely used as a carving material from prehistoric times onwards. Elephant tusks have been the commonest source of ivory, but mammoth tusks (from deposits in Siberia), hippopotamus teeth, and walrus tusks have been much used; carvings made from narwhal and rhinoceros horn, stag-horn, and even bone, have also been embraced by the term. True ivory is an excellent material for high-quality, small-scale sculpture, for although it is difficult to carve, it can be worked...
Stolyar, Abram Davidovich (1921–2014) Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (3 ed.)
...department, undertaking archaeological expeditions in the Volga region, the Caucasus, the Crimea, Central Ukraine, the Don region, Siberia, Central Asia, the Ladoga region, Karelia, and the Kola Peninsula. His publications include The first Vasilievsky Mesolithic burial ground (1959); Meshoko: A settlement of the Maikop culture (1961); and Meshoko: The oldest fortress of the Caucasus (2009). He continued working on prehistoric art after his retirement in 1995, recognizing the petroglyphs of Fennoscandia as the culmination of the spiritual development of...
ivory Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of Art (3 ed.)
.... A hard, smooth, creamy white substance obtained from the tusks or teeth of certain animals, widely used as a carving material from prehistoric times onwards. Elephant tusks have been the commonest source of ivory, but mammoth tusks (from deposits in Siberia), hippopotamus teeth, and walrus tusks have been much used (the famous Bury St Edmunds Cross ( see Master Hugo ) is in walrus ivory); carvings made from narwhal and rhinoceros horn, stag horn, and even bone have also been embraced by the term. True ivory is an excellent material for high-quality,...
Mongolia, Archaeology of Reference library
Jean-Luc Houle
The Oxford Companion To Archaeology (2 ed.)
...of mobile herders, notably those within the Turk (sixth to eighth centuries ad ), Uighur (eighth to ninth centuries ad ), Khitan (tenth to twelfth centuries ad ), and Mongol (thirteenth to fourteenth centuries ad ) empires. [ See also China ; Shihuangdi, Tomb of ; Siberia, Prehistoric .] Allard, Francis , and Diimaajav Erdenebaatar . “Khirisgsuurs, Ritual, and Nomadic Pastoralism in the Bronze Age of Mongolia.” Antiquity 17 (2005): 1–18. A concise overview of Mongolia’s Bronze Age monumental landscape, with a particular focus on khirigsuur mounds in...
Venus Figurines Reference library
Marcia-Anne Dobres
The Oxford Companion To Archaeology (2 ed.)
...is a time-honored way to understand the significance of prehistoric material culture. Attention to different kinds of site context, detailed understanding of various techniques of fabrication, recognition of their diverse morphologies and raw material, site-specific spatial information, and consideration of other classes of artifacts that Venus figurines were discovered with may all help turn our attention away from what is compelling today and toward whatever might have made them compelling to prehistoric peoples. [ See also Europe: The European Paleolithic...
Shamanism – Neo (Eastern Europe) Reference library
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature
...affairs. In the vacuum created by the dismantled state institutions, religions emerged with vehemence. From North Asia and Siberia, to East Central Europe, from the Baltic republics, to the Balkan Peninsula, traditional folkways have been utilized to establish cultural continuity and national preeminence. Coupled with the neo-shamanic world are national myths of Pan-Slavic unity, the pagan-Slavdom, the remembrance of prehistoric empires and ruling dynasties (Dacians for Romanians, Scythians for Hungarians), and homogeneous peasant traditions that bespeak...
Prehistory Reference library
Marcia‐Anne Dobres
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...or breastfeeding—thus they merely evolved on the “coattails” of men. Current theories about prehistoric women and men involve far less wishful thinking and projection of modern gender ideologies into the past. Archaeological research on prehistoric gender is concerned with explaining how and why the past might have been different from the present, and in the past two decades there has been a significant conceptual shift in how researchers think about prehistoric women and men. Archaeologists generally distinguish between sex differences (defined as a...
Regional Developments Reference library
Margarita Díaz-Andreu
The Oxford Companion To Archaeology (2 ed.)
...is in the concern about the rights of indigenous communities, which is drastically changing the nature of archaeology, not only in America, but also worldwide. European archaeology was also influential in the early development of archaeology in Asia through the colonization of Siberia and central Asia by Russia, of South Asia by Britain, and of Southeast Asia by the Netherlands and France, in addition to other minor colonial powers in the area, such as Spain and Portugal. Independent countries such as China and Japan accommodated their own antiquarian...
Ginseng Reference library
Paul D. BUELL
Berkshire Encyclopedia of China
...replace and expand root sources in areas where wild ginseng has disappeared. Interest in ginseng as a cure-all had also grown in the West by the nineteenth century, and the remotest parts of Manchuria were soon harvested from end to end by ginseng hunters. They advanced far into Siberia as Manchurian resources were depleted. By the late nineteenth century China was even importing wild ginseng from Canada and the United States ( Panax quincefolium ), a trade that continues to some extent, although both countries are now net importers of ginseng, mostly from South...
Shamanism Reference library
Barbara Tedlock
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...shamans beginning in prehistoric times and stretching into the present who have practiced traditional aspects of shamanic wisdom: soul journeys, lucid dreaming, possession, shape‐shifting, control over the elements, divination, chanting, healing, soul retrieval, herbalism, and midwifery. North Asia is generally considered to be the heartland of shamanism, and diaries, biographies, and ethnographies from this region show that women have had at least as great a power as men as shamanic practitioners. Among the Altaian nomads in Siberia, for example, there are...
Frontier Sites of the American West Reference library
Robert L. Schuyler
The Oxford Companion To Archaeology (2 ed.)
...the West and continued into the twentieth century. Fort Ross. Contemporaneous with the eclipse of Pecos another European frontier settlement was forming on the West Coast. Fort Ross ( 1812–1841 ) was the most outer link in a chain of Russian fur-trading posts extending from Siberia, across the Aleutian Islands and mainland Alaska, ending at Ross on the Pacific shore north of San Francisco. Archaeological exploration has recovered the plan of the original stockade with its two blockhouses and the enclosed Russian administration and residential quarters. More...
Foraging Societies, Contemporary Reference library
David LEVINSON
Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History (2 ed.)
...rain forests of the south and southeast (in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and in Arctic Siberia. Finally, in the Pacific, the aboriginal peoples of Australia were foragers. Among the foragers who have drawn considerable anthropological and popular attention are the Mbuti and Efe of central Africa, the San of Botswana, the Andaman Islanders in the Andaman Sea, the Copper Eskimos in Alaska, the Chukchi in Siberia, the Ache of Paraguay, the Yir Yoront and Tiwi in Australia, and the Semang and related groups in Malaysia. A Native American...
Jade Reference library
The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art
...from the 16th century, and their source must also have been Sino-Central Asia. The only other known source of nephrite in continental Asia is central Siberia in the area of Lake Baikal. Nephrite was also found along the Onot River south of Irkutsk. Siberian jade is green with minute flecks of black chromite scattered through it: the Chinese call it ‘spinach’ jade ( bocai yu ). It was used in prehistoric times in this area for axes, ornaments and trade pieces and appears to have been exported to China in the Neolithic period, though written evidence of this...
Felt Reference library
The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art
...I. Jahrtausend n. Chr.’, Ostasiatische Zeitschrift , n. s., xii (1936), pp. 47–61 L. Olschki : The Myth of Felt (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949) S. I. Rudenko : Kultura naseleniya gornogo Altaya v. skifskoe vremya (Moscow and Leningrad, 1953); Eng. trans. as Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of Iron Age Horsemen (London, 1970) ‘Felt’, Ciba Zeitschrift (1958), no. 129 [Gesellschaft für chemische Industrie] J. F. Haskins : ‘ The Pazyryk Felt Screen and the Barbarian Captivity of Tasi Wei Chei ’, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities...
Bigfoot Reference library
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature
...Algonkian Indians told of Windigo, a wild cannibal giant, while indigenous residents of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula have stories of Nantiinaq, who can change from its Bigfoot shape into those of other creatures. Other shaggy giants have been reported in Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, and Siberia. Europeans also had “Wild Man” stories, not to mention the half-animal Pan and the satyrs, all living on the margin of civilization and embodying the energies of surging life, vegetation, and wild-animal reproduction. Alleged sightings of live creatures or discoveries of their...
Rock Art Reference library
Paul G. Bahn, Christopher Chippindale, Paul G. Bahn, Jarl Nordbladh, Johan Ling, Polly Schaafsma, and David Frankel
The Oxford Companion To Archaeology (2 ed.)
...as well as late foraging and hunting groups. Represented in the East is the work of Mississippian prehistoric farmers and ancestors of historic tribes. Petroglyphs in the Upper Ohio Valley are attributed to Algonquian-speaking Eastern Woodland groups between AD 1200 and AD 1750. Likewise, rock art on the Canadian Shield in the Northern Woodlands was made by Algonquian-speakers. Rock art on the High Plains includes figures of late prehistoric shield-bearing warriors. Foundations for contemporary Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache ritual art are present among...
Land Use Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Global Change
...and livestock became the dominant land uses, forcing land-cover change. By the middle of the twentieth century, the major trends were toward increased intensification of use in the middle latitudes and semitropics and, more recently, widespread deforestation of the tropics and Siberia ( Richards , 1990 ). Intensification is registered by the spread of irrigated cultivation (cautiously estimated at about 2.5 million square kilometers; L’vovich et al., 1990 , p. 242), especially that of wet rice (a large source of methane, CH 4 ), and the adoption of modern...
