Ivory Bead Ornaments from the Sungir Paleolithic Site

This article presents the results of a study of composite ornaments made of ivory beads from burials of a man and two adolescents, discovered by O.N. Bader at Sungir, a site dating to the Final Early Upper Paleolithic (30–26 ka BP). The burials are excessively rich in such ornaments, which were made by stringing many beads on a sinew or thread made of organic material. Strings of beads preserved in burials and retaining the order of constituent elements were used as a source for identifying typologically meaningful forms of beads. Owing to the alternation of elements of various shapes or similar in form but made from different blanks, a specific rhythmic structure was generated. The composition of strings suggests that eight types of ivory bead were employed. Two main techniques of stringing were used: by isolating the central group of beads, and by arranging them in the order of size gradually decreasing from one end to the other. The search for cultural parallels has revealed that the principle of combining different types of beads to create strings was similar to that used at contemporaneous sites in southern Germany dating to the Final Aurignacian.