The Ushki Lake sites are five locales along the Ushki Lake shore of the Kamchatka Peninsula of northeastern Siberia, in the region known as western Beringia. All of the sites are reported to have seven similar occupation levels, and all are thought to represent human occupation between about 200 and 14,300 years ago.
The dates for the oldest occupations in the Ushki Lake sites are somewhat controversial. The original excavations reported Component 7 was dated 16,800 cal years BP; but these dates were considered contaminated by soluble organics. Recent dates on Ushki 1 and 5 taken by Goebel et al. reported a 13,435-12,635 cal years BP for Component 7 and 13,175-11,255 cal years BP for Component 6.
The lowest Late Pleistocene Level (Level 7) is roughly coeval with the Nenana complex of Alaska, and, like Nenana includes a stone tool assemblage with wedge-shaped cores and small bifaces, including small notched or possibly stemmed projectile points, scrapers and burins. Level 6, roughly coeval with the Dyuktai complex, contains microblades, burins, bifaces and scrapers, as well as stone pendants. Both levels contain evidence of shallow dwelling pits; Level 6 had at least two burials (dog and human).
The presence of microblades at Uskhi sites are evidence of association with the Late or Terminal Siberian Upper Paleolithic (ca 18,000-11,000 BP), including regional cultures such as Dyuktai and Afontova-Kokorevo.
Obsidian sourcing of artifacts from Ushki Lake late Pleistocene levels suggest the residents followed a highly mobile hunting and gathering strategy. Between four and six different sources of the volcanic glass were identified within the oldest levels at Ushki, all between about 200 and 300 kilometers from the sites.
The Ushki Lake sites were discovered in the 1960s by Nikolai Dikov.
Sources
On the Texas A&M website can be found a paper on Ushki Lakes, with several photographs.
Bever, M. R. 2001 An Overview of Alaskan Late Pleistocene Archaeology: Historical Themes and Current Perspectives. Journal of World Prehistory 15(2):125-191.
Goebel, Ted 2002 The "Microblade Adaptation" and Recolonization of Siberia during the Late Upper Pleistocene. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 12(1):117-131.
Goebel, Ted, Michael R. Waters, and Margarita Dikova 2003 The Archaeology of Ushki Lake, Kamchatka, and the Pleistocene Peopling of the Americas. Science 301:501-505.
Kuzmin, Yaroslav V., et al. in press Obsidian use at the Ushki Lake complex, Kamchatka Peninsula (Northeastern Siberia): implications for terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene human migrations in Beringia. Journal of Archaeological Science in press.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
