The Berelekh quest: A review of forty years of research in the mammoth graveyard in northeast Siberia

Abstract

The Berelekh mammoth graveyard became known following its first scientific description in 1947. Both the “graveyard” and the “archaeological site” were investigated in the early 1970s, and then systematic investigations ended. This article reviews all the available data from a range of sources and provides a complete set of the 36 14C dates so far obtained for the Berelekh geoarchaeological complex. The host deposits of the Berelekh bone bed (or mammoth graveyard) accumulated between 14,000 and 11,000 14C yr B.P., with the most intensive accumulation of bones around 12,300 14C yr B.P. There is almost no chronological overlap between the “graveyard” and “archaeological site” at the same location. Episodes of human habitation near the bone bed, which produced the Late Palaeolithic Berelekh archaeological site, were related to the exploitation of natural mass mammoth accumulation, which was a valuable source of raw material, such as ivory and long bones. The youngest mammoth remains date to 11,800 14C yr B.P. and have no cultural relation to the Dyuktai archaeological culture. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Faunal record identifies Bering isthmus conditions as constraint to end-Pleistocene migration to the New World

“…Given its geographical distance from equivalently aged sites in the continental US and the distinctive microtools found there, Swan Point does not appear to have an ancestral relationship to sites further south. The situation for northeast Siberia extends the paradox, as almost all of the regional archaeology postdates 14 ka (with the Berelekh site dated to 14-11 ka [12]); the single exception is the much earlier (ca 32 ka) Yana RHS [13]. The relationship of Yana RHS to the earliest sites in North America is also uncertain, which is unsurprising given that they are separated by more than 15 ka.…”

Wooly mammoth mass accumulation next to the Paleolithic Yana RHS site, Arctic Siberia: its geology, age, and relation to past human activity

“…are the accumulation of bones and the cultural remains from the site synchronous and, if so, to which extent the human activity is expressed in the formation of YMAM. In other words, is this accumulation natural, like other mass accumulations of mammoth known within the region, such as Berelyokh and Achchaghyi-Allaikha (Nikolskiy et al, 2010a;Pitulko, 2011), or the Yana mass accumulation of mammoth has anthropogenic origin. Consequently, if it is the case, the role of mammoth in the subsistence economy of the Yana people has to be reevaluated.…”

The extinction of the woolly mammoth and the archaeological record in Northeastern Asia

“…Mochanov (1977) hypothesized that the bone bed might have been formed as a result of mammoth hunting by the Late Paleolithic inhabitants of the region. A recent study of Berelekh (Pitulko 2011a;Pitulko et al 2011) demonstrates that there is almost no overlap of 14 C dates from the mammoth remains and the organic remains that are clearly related to human activity (charcoal and faunal remains clearly associated with artifacts, including hare and ptarmigan). This suggests that the mass accumulation of mammoths at Berelekh was formed by natural causes.…”

“…Two Terminal Pleistocene sites in Arctic Siberia, Berelekh (Pitulko 2011a) and Achchagyi-Allaikha (Nikolskiy et al 2010), are associated with mass mammoth accumulations. It is interesting that the most intensive period of bone accumulation at Berelekh and at Achchaghyi-Allaikha took place nearly contemporaneously at 12,600-12,400 14 C BP.…”