Diuktai Cave (also spelled Dyuktai) is an archaeological site on the Aldan River, a tributary of the Lena in eastern Siberia, occupied by a group that may have been ancestral to some Paleoarctic people of North America.
The people who lived in Diuktai Cave were hunter-gatherers and fishers and used triangular points. Occupation levels have been dated between 33,000-10,000 BP.
Diuktai culture is the name given to the part of this site dated to between 14,000 and 13,000 BP. Diuktai culture sites are part of the latter part of the Late or Terminal Siberian Upper Paleolithic (ca 18,000-13,000 BP), and they are characterized by the presence of microblades, bifacial knives, burins and triangular points.
The researcher most associated with Diuktai cave is Russian archaeologist Yuri Mochanov.
Sources
Goebel, Ted 2002The "Microblade Adaptation" and Recolonization of Siberia during the Late Upper Pleistocene. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 12(1):117-131.
Powers, William Rogers. 1996. Prehistoric Siberia. Pp 644-645 in Brian Fagan (ed). 1996. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology. Any mistakes are the responsibility of Kris Hirst.
