Elena V. Leonova
Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow, Russia
E-mail: lenischa@yandex.ru 

Keywords: chronology, periodization, the Neolithic, the Mesolithic, the North Caucasus, stone tools, trapeze, pressure.

The article discusses the issues of the Neolithic of the North Caucasus. The case of the “Neolithic hiatus” in the North Caucasus has arisen due to the controversy of criteria for distinguishing the Neolithic, the scarcity and incompleteness of archaeological sources of the Early Holocene for this region combined with the lack of a sufficient number of radiocarbon dates and poor knowledge of the issue. However, a reference to the Neolithic materials of neighbouring regions including the Northern Pontic, the Crimea, the Azov littoral, the Northern Caspian and Central Asia along with the study of stone tool collections suggest that some of the materials that were previously interpreted as late Mesolithic or Eneolithic can be attributed to the Neolithic.

DOI: 10.31857/S086960630007213-3