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FIGURE 1.—Map showing location of Salekhard and Ust' Poluisk settlement
(diamond).
thorough visual examination after removal from the excavation
units. This excavation methodology was in general use by Russian
archaeologists in the 1930s (D.N. Praslov, Institute of Material
Culture, St. Petersburg, pers. comm., 1996). The authors
believe excavation methods were quite thorough, judging from
the small size of many of the artifacts collected and of some
bird bones (quadratum, premaxilla, and others).
The lack of small passerine birds at the site may be due to
taphonomic conditions, similar to the other open-air sites on
the Russian Plain (i.e., Kostenki) (D.N. Praslov, pers. comm.,
1996) and North Caucasus (i.e., Ilskaya 2) (O.R. Potapova,
pers. obs., 1997). The deposits from these sites were screened
but yielded no small passerine bird remains and only extremely
rare fossilized rodents. The hunting preferences of aboriginal
humans, oriented to prey larger than passerine birds, could be
another reason. There is, however, the possibility that some of
the smallest bone material was not located or was lost.
All bird-bone collections from the site are deposited in the
Zoological Institute, Ornithological Section, St. Petersburg,
Russia. Bird-bone artifacts are deposited in the MAE.
SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO PALEOBIOLOGY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.—We express our appreciation to T.A.
Popova, Gennadii Khlopachev, and L.N. Gizha (MAE Archaeology
Department) for their help and for making bird-bone artifacts
available for the study. We also thank M. McGrady,
Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds (RSPB, Scotland),
and Eugene R. Potapov, Institute of Biological Problems of the
North (IBPN, Magadan, Russia), for the translation and preliminary
editing of the first manuscript draft, and we thank
Anne Karin Hufthammer, University of Bergen, Norway, for
valuable discussions of Holocene assemblages of Norway. We
are very grateful for the essential suggestions, reviews, and
critical editing by S. Olson, C. Mourer-Chauvire, and D. Serjeantson.
We express special thanks to Lance W Rom (U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation
Service) for the substantial contribution he made in editorial
and stylistic revisions and essential additions to the final
manuscript.
Discussion
Thirty-nine bird species were indentified from excavations at
Ust' Poluisk settlement (Table 1). Many of these species are
now restricted to more southern regions and only occasionally
visit the lower Ob' River as vagrants or, rarely, as breeders, this
being the northern boundary of their current range. It is possible
that 2000 years ago the breeding ranges of these birds extended
farther to the north, because the paleobotanical record
suggests that at that time northwestern Siberia had a warmer
climate than at present (Volkova et al., 1989). Two thousand
years ago the timber line was north of Salekhard, and there
were pine forests at the mouth of the Polui River (Moshinskaya,
1953). The presence of a forest ecosystem during the
time the site was occupied is supported by relatively numerous
archaeological findings of birch bark and of remains of forestdwelling
animals, such as squirrels, beavers, sable, and moose
(Kosinstsev, 1997), at the site.
The bird-species assemblage includes individuals from seven
groups. More than 92% are grouse and waterfowl. Diumal
birds of prey and owls represent 6.1% (Table 2). Birds from
these groups were probably hunted for food or may have
played a role in the cultural traditions of the population. Passerine
birds are represented by corvids, which might have been
attracted to the settlement by garbage.
At Ust' Poluisk, grouse account for 51.4% of all bones, with
most of these belonging to Willow Ptarmigans {Lagopus lagopus
(Linnaeus)). This species is numerous in Paleolithic-age
sites of the northern and middle Urals (Potapova, 1990, 1991)
and in forest and forest-steppe zone sites on the Russian Plain,
such as Kostenki, Novgorod-Severskii, Mezin (Zubareva,
1950), and Afontova Gora-3 in southern Siberia (Tugarinov,
1932).
In Holocene archaeological sites, the remains of Willow
Ptarmigans are rare. At Mayak 2, an early Bronze Age site on
the Kola Peninsula, the remains of Willow Ptarmigans com-