European Kingdoms

Kama-Petchora Complex (Mesolithic) (Eastern European Plain)
c.8000 - 5000 BC

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The crossover between the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in Europe (and more specifically Northern Europe) took place about a millennium after the wide-ranging Magdalenian had faded. The later Swiderian culture which was so important in this specific instance was centred around modern Poland, with extensions both eastwards and southwards.

On the Eastern European fringe of the Swiderian, and of the Epigravettian which was initially so strong in Southern Europe, there appeared a number of more or less contemporaneous Epi-Palaeolithic (Late Old Stone Age) and early Mesolithic cultures. This mainly took place in the steppe zone across the northern Black Sea region, but activity was also taking place on the Eastern European Plain between the Vistula and the Ural mountains.

The Mesolithic Kama-Pechora complex (or Kama-Pechora) existed in what is now Russia, particularly in regions along the Kama and Pechora rivers. Not to be confused with the later Volga-Kama culture, it can claim to be an umbrella framework for a number of local cultural units which were spread across the Eastern European plain.

These have been separated by various authors into little-known standalone cultures, while others have retained the umbrella designation, regarding the 'cultures' as minor local variations. Those variations include the Kama Ust', Ulyanovo, Vis, Vitchegda Ust', and others, but it has to be stressed that practically all Mesolithic cultural units to the north of the Kama-Petchora complex used the same core processing technique and were therefore indistinguishable from the core territory of the complex itself.

Lithic (stone) assemblages for the complex as a whole are based on those processing methods which were being used to produce bullet-shaped cores: these are mainly conical.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information by ChatGPT 3.5 (dates and base notes only), from The Magdalenian Settlement of Europe, Quaternary International Volumes 272-273 (2012), from Location of the Uralic proto-language in the Kama River Valley and the Uralic speakers, Asko Parpola (Expansion east and west with the 'Sejma-Turbino transcultural phenomenon' 2200-1900 BC, 2022), and from External Links: A problem of the bullet shaped cores: a global perspective, Karol Szymczak (University of Warsaw, 2002, and available via Academia.edu), and The Palaeolithic of the Western Steppe Zone, Karol Szymczak (Reference Module in Social Sciences, 2023, available via Science Direct), and Early Mesolithic (Indo-European.eu), and Mesolithic Settlements of the Ukrainian Steppes: migration as sociocultural response to a changing world, Olena Smyntyna (British Archaeological Reports, International Series, 2456, 93-98, January 2013, and available via ResearchGate), and Mesolithic Period (Science Direct), and Wooden products of the late Mesolithic, Olga Lozovskaya (Candidate of Historical Sciences, St Petersburg, 2011, in Russian, available from DisserCat).)

c.8000 BC

The Preboreal period between about 8000-7100 BC sees the climate become significantly warmer in the Baltics and other northern regions. Birch and pine forests start to spread, and elk, bear, beaver, and various species of water birds migrate into the region from the south.

Although culturally and technologically continuous with Palaeolithic cultures, Mesolithic cultures quickly developed diverse local adaptations for special environments, as this map shows (click or tap on map to view full sized)

The oldest Butovo-site artefacts are dated to the period immediately preceding this, during the rise in temperatures at the end of the Younger Dryas period and up to the start of the Preboreal period.

The Kama Petchora now emerges in the southern part of Butovo territory, along the northern flank of the River Kama around its confluence with the Volga. This culture also contains a number of minor regional variations which some modern scholars count as individual cultures, including the Kama Ust', Ulyanovo, Vis, and Vitchegda Ust.

c.7100 BC

The Boreal period (until about 5800 BC) sees the climate continue to warm and become drier. Pine forests decrease, allowing deciduous trees to gain a firmer foothold and become prevalent. The animal population thrives, with red deer, roe deer, and hare increasing considerably.

The Preboreal period is a formative stage of the early Holocene which lasted between 9000-4000 BC, one in which the post-glacial world of Northern Europe was warming to temperatures which were very close to those of the twentieth century

c.7000 BC

The early Mesolithic Ienevo and Resseta cultures of the northern flank of the Volga, a relatively short way to the west of the Kama-Petchora, does not survive the crossover between Preboreal and Boreal periods. Its people are apparently absorbed into the still-thriving Butovo culture.

c.6265 - 5435 BC

The only two radiocarbon dates for sites in the Kama region are not as old as the culture's start date. The 'Barinka II' site is dated to 6265 BC, with a margin either way of a hundred and thirty years, and the 'Barinka I' site is dated to 5435 BC, with a one hundred and seventy year error margin.

c.6000 BC

Groups from the Butovo and Kunda cultures have already migrated southwards to the plains on the eastern side of the River Dnieper to form the Dnieper-Donets I, Azov-Dnieper, and Mariupol cultures. In the forests of the north the Butovo is now succeeded by the remaining lifetime of the Kama-Petchora.

The River Kama today is within Russia, shown here near Kolesnikovo to the north-east of the confluence of the Volga, are directly to the north of the Caspian Sea