This collection of papers devoted to the Ice Age of northern Russia provides illustrated descriptions of landforms and sediments revealing former ice sheets of the arctic shelf that inundated northern Russia. It shows that a peculiar Siberian type of inland glaciation is inferred from preserved Ice Age features. This type of glacial environment implies arrested landscape evolution in continental climates with fossil glacial ice surviving within the conservative permafrost. The contributions here delve into the problem of the size and age of the last glaciation intensely discussed in the international literature. This is of broad interest because its solution is paramount for global climatic models and the reconstruction of Circum-Arctic paleoenvironments. It is also essential for understanding natural conditions of early human migration into the Arctic. Another point of interest is the book’s discussion of the profound impact of reconstructed glaciers on the tectonic structure and distribution of petroleum reserves.

The site of Bol’shoy Yakor’ I is one of the most intensively investigated Late Pleistocene sites in Eastern Siberia. This volume compiles and presents the outcome of more than three decades of research by the authors in English for the first time. The site, discussed in the context of the landscape that surrounds it and the wider archaeology of the region, is considered as a palimpsest of activity, built up through repeated episodes of activity. Through a detailed study of the techniques of lithic production and animal exploitation, these activities are refitted into the seasonal cycles of the prehistoric hunter-gatherers who performed them. This book represents a valuable source for regional experts, technical specialists, and students with an interest in the Upper Palaeolithic of Northern Eurasia.

The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain examines the hunter-gatherer adaptations on the Upper Paleolithic central Russian Plain. The book offers both a culture history for the area and an explanation for the changes in human adaptation. It presents what has been found at 29 major Upper Paleolithic sites occupied over a period of some 14,000 years. The book presents details of the archaeological inventories and assemblages found at the 29 sites, together with the geography and geology of the study area. It then uses environmental data to model environmental conditions and resource distribution during the various periods of human occupation, as well as to predict optimal strategies for exploiting available resources. Subsequent chapters present the relative and chronometric dating schemes. The book also elucidates the man-land relationships, ensuing subsistence strategies, settlement types present in the archaeological record, settlement systems, and sociopolitical behavior. The text will be significant to archaeologists, paleoecologists, and anthropologists interested in hunter-gatherers and late Pleistocene adaptations.

This is the third volume in The Oxford Regional Environments series. The series volumes are devoted to major regions of the world, each presenting a detailed and up-to-date body of scientific knowledge concerning a particular region. For most topics on the physical geography of Northern Eurasia abundant literature now exists. Most of it, however, is in Russian and other East European languages and this has significantly limited the number of potential readers. This volume seeks to familiarize, at an international level, those with an interest in this area with the most significant achievements in classical and current geographical research. The Physical Geography of Northern Eurasia covers most of the territory of the former USSR. The first section discusses the individual compenents of the physical environment. These chapters cut across regional boundaries and treate the area discussed as a whole. A regional analysis follows mainly in the context of geographical zonation, though a number of specific regions are given individual treatment. The concluding chapters discuss the effects of anthropogenic activities on the physical environment. The approach is an integrative one, tying together various aspects of the physical environments with the environmental implications of human activites. Every component of the environment is treated as a step in the development of the multi-faceted landscapes which in turn provide possibilities and limitations for cultural and economic usage.