Age and Natural Environment of the Horse Hunters' Site Sholma I in the Right Bank of the Volga in Chuvashia

The paper presents new data on the dating and paleogeography of the Sholma I site, which has been studied by the authors since the early 2000s on the Tsivil River in Chuvashia. Two AMS dates obtained from horse bones from the 2017 excavation: 10838-10717 Cal BC (95,4%) (UOC-8154) и 11131-10846 Cal BC (95,4%) (UOC-8155) confirmed the authors ' opinion expressed in 2009 that the site of the final Paleolithic functioned in the natural conditions of the interstadial warming of the Allerød at the end of the ice Age. Results of a soil study of samples in 2017, in particular, analyzes for the content of gross phosphorus and microbiomorphs carried out by A. A. Golyeva are highlighted. Analogies to the features of the blade stone industry and trapezoid inserts of throwing weapons in the sites of the Pleistocene and Holocene boundary are revealed. As a result, the authors have outlined two possible directions of communication of specialized hunters who came to the Middle Volga region with a characteristic set of combat weapons in the conditions of interstadial warming. It could be south-east and south-west directions. The south-eastern one is represented by complexes with trapezia of the lower layers of the Shiderty 3 site in north-eastern Kazakhstan and the Gora Mayak settlement in the Samara trans-Volga region, and the south-western one – by the sites with trapezia and other forms of inserts that existed during Allerød in the valleys of the Seversky Donets and the Middle Don.