User:Bobenergy/Dyuktaki Cave

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Dyuktai Cave (also called Diuktai, D'uktai, Divktai or Duktai in Russian) is a site found in Russia’s Yakutia Region (or Sakha Republic) along the Dyuktai River in the Aldan River drainage. Discovered by Yuri Mochanov in 1967, who conducted an excavation in the same year, it is located at 59.288 latitude and 132.607 longitude, a total of 317 square meters (3412 square feet) has been excavated. The archaeological site is part of the Dyuktai Complex; the cave among the youngest of the Dyuktai culture sites and was belived t be part of the Late Terminal Siberian Upper Paleolithic Age (ca. 18000-13000 calBC).

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Site deposits of the cave cover inside and outside: the cave has a depth of up to 2.3 meters (71.5 feet), and outside, the deposits reach 5.2 meters (17 feet) in depth. Most artifacts found at the Dyuktai Cave are wastes from tool production, such as wedge-shaped cores and single-platform and radially flaked cores, and raw materials such as a black flint and a white/beige flint of unknown source. It was suggested that the site was rather a temporary settlement due to the discovered artifacts and ecofacts.

The archaeological record of Dyuktai Cave also contributes to our understanding of human migration patterns and interactions in prehistoric Siberia. Through the analysis of artifacts and genetic evidence, researchers aim to unravel the complex movements of ancient populations across the vast landscapes of northeastern Asia, shedding light on the peopling of the region and its connections to broader migratory processes. The importance of this site lies in whether or not the site has connections to North America due to the existence of a temporary land bridge that connected Asia and North America about 12000 years ago. This was concluded when researchers constructed a family tree to compare the traits of the languages shared, which added to the evidence that there was indeed a land bridge that may have been a route for migration from Asia to North America. Gomez Coutouly from the French National Center for Scientific Research suggests them to be a similar comparison to the Denali complex in Alaska, and even ancestral to the Nenana and Clovis complexes. Others argued that Kyuktai is ancestral to Denali, yet the Ushki Lake site, near the Dyuktai Cave, is too late to be ancestral to Denali.

There are nine stratigraphic units assigned to the cave deposits; strata 7, 8, and 9 are associated with the Dyuktai Complex. ( https://www.thoughtco.com/diuktai-cave-in-russia-170714 ) Mochanov in his paper “THE EARLIEST STAGES OF SETTLEMENT BY PEOPLE OF NORTHEAST ASIA” described the full Dyuktai complex that he excavated at the time. About the Dyuktai Cave, he assembled and analyzed the different components of the artifacts left over. In total, Layer VIIa of Dyuktai Cave has 1,693 stones, 8 bone objects, ad 1631 animal bones, the bones identified to belong to mammoth: 24 specimens (pieces of tusk), bison: 2 specimens; horse, 1 specimen, reindeer: 32 specimens; moose: 33 specimens: snow sheep: 4 specimens, wolf:4 specimens, fox: 9 specimens, arctic fox: 12 specimens, hare: 38 specimens, ground squirrel: 7 specimens, rodents: 32 specimens, birds: 2 specimens, and fishes, 2 specimens. The stone objects consist of flakes (1328), flint flakes (190), slabs (54 specimens), blades (60), ski-shaped spalls (5), cores (23), and tools (33). The Flakes are divided into materials flint (1323) and diabase (5). Specimens of black and black-banded flint predominate, though there are flakes of white, red, gray, and grayish-pink also discovered. Further divisions due to size differences are as follows: large (230), medium (330), and small (768). All diabase flakes are small.

Flint slabs served as a source material for making cores and tools. Nearly all are in the initial blank stage, where the nodule cortex was partially removed, with a trace of flaking. The overwhelming majority of blades were made from black or black-banded flint. The cores discovered are divided into 4 types: wedge-shaped (16), flat unifacial subprismatic (3), prismatic (2), and subdiscoid (2).

The tools uncovered were scrapers (2), burins (2), knives and knife blanks (14), points of darts (?), spears (3), lamellar blades with a beveled edge (3), inset blades (4), skreblos (4), and whetstones (1). The scrapers were made on flat flakes of black flint. The burins were made on flakes of black flint and gray argillaceous-siliceous slate. Flint blades (2) and flint slabs (10) served as material for making knives. The knives on the blades were made of black flint. Both knives on flint blades had a dual assignment their longitudinal edges served as the working edges of knives, while the transverse, lower ends served as the working edges of scrapers.

The skreblos on flakes have a semilunar and subtriangular form. The semilunar one is a lateral skreblo with a high back and an ovally convex working edge modified by a stepped retouch directed from the ventral to the dorsal.