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Olenii ostrov: first radiocarbon dates from a major Mesolithic cemetery in Karelia, USSR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

T. Douglas Price  and
Kenneth Jacobs
T. Douglas Price
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, 5240 Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI 53706, USA
Kenneth Jacobs
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Université de Montréal, CP6128 Succursale A. Montreal PQH3C 3J7, Canada
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Extract

The first radiocarbon determinations for a large prehistoric cemetery in Karelia, USSR, have been obtained using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) of several organic fractions from prehistoric human bone samples. These determinations suggest an age of c. 7500 b.p. for the burials, definitely within the Mesolithic period. Additional information from skeletal and isotope evidence confirm Olenii ostrov as a very important Mesolithic site in northern Europe.

Type
Notes
Information
Antiquity , Volume 64 , Issue 245 , December 1990 , pp. 849 - 853
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1990

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Footnotes

Burials of the Mesolithioc period in Europe are scarce, and cemeteries are scarcer still. The large cemetery at Olenii ostrov in Karelia, the extreme north-west of the Soviet Union, is so unusual that its original excavator did not consider it Mesolithic at all. A series of 14C determinations now establishes its Mesolithic date and therefore confirms its important place in the study of early post-glacial Europe

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