Neolithization of the Volga-Kama Forest Region

The problem of Volga-Kama neolithization was reflected primarily in the works by the Kazan archaeologists A.Kh. Khalikov and R.S. Gabyashev. Currently, the settlement area of the early Neolithic formations has been defined, chronological framework of their existence has been designated, and their further transformation to the culture of the Kama and Oka Neolithic has been traced. But still there is the problem of criteria for defining the boundary of the Mesolithic and Neolithic. The study of complexes referring to the transitional period from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic has allowed the author to make a conclusion about a simultaneous process of neolithization in the forest zone of European Russia that had taken place at the turn of the 7th to 6th and throughout the 6th millennium BC. It is also assumed that the origins of the bearers of flat-bottomed stroke-ornamented and incised pottery, the earliest for the Middle Volga Neolithic culture, are associated with the southern forest-steppe Yelshan type cultures. The migration of population groups from the south took place in the first half of the 6th millennium BC. In the Mari lowland, they came into contact with the local Late Mesolithic population and developed a new cultural formation, related to the Yelshan, Samara and Upper Volga cultures