The distinguished Russian archeologist Aleksei P. Okladnikov's study reveals how a field archeologist goes about determining and writing prehistory. Over the course of his career, Okladnikov and his wife Vera Zaporozhskaya travelled across Siberia from the Lena River in the north to the Amur River in the south excavating archaeological sites. During that time Aleksei and Vera found and interpreted the rock art of the vast region from the Paleolithic Era to the present day. Relying on petroglyphs and pictographs left on cliffs and boulders, Okladnikov lays out in detail and straightforward language the prehistory of Siberia by "reading" these artifacts. This book permits the past to be told in its own words: the art portrayed on the cliffs of Siberia.

The Palaeolithic of Northeast Asia: The History and Results of Research in 1940-1980 combines details of discoveries of Palaeolithic sites in a vast region of Northeast Asia (covering mostly the northeastern part of modern Russia), and meticulous analysis of hypotheses, ideas, and concepts related to the Northeast Asian Palaeolithic. Written in the 1980s - 1990s, it is based on the author's own experience and analysis of published and archival sources. The volume is especially important for better understanding the development of knowledge on this subject, closely related to the issue of the peopling of the New World. The author presents details on the conceptual issues developed by Soviet archaeologists, not previously available to the international scholarly community. This book is for archaeologists, ethnographers, and historians of science in the USSR and worldwide. It has a special interest for students of the peopling of the Americas.

This volume makes available a vast amount of research on the Stone Age of Chukotka to a non-Russian speaking audience. Margarita Kiryak surveys the history of archaeology in the region and introduces the principal archaeological sites, before explaining her model for the periodization of the Stone Age complexes, comparative analysis of palaeolithic sites in neighbouring regions, and a discussion of problems of ethnic identification. Appendices offer illustrations of a rich variety of artefacts from the lithic assemblages.

Both because it was a valuable commodity in many prehistoric cultures, and because almost every obsidian source has its own unique geochemical portrait, obsidian provides a useful window on mobility and exchange in Prehistory. To that end this volume gathers provenance studies on obsidian from right around the north Pacific rim including Japan, Korea, eastern Russia, north America and Mexico.

Arranged in chronological order and by region, each of these studies is written by a specialist who has participated in some or all of the archaeological expeditions reported here. They show not just the unanticipated richness of the archaeology of the Russian Far East but, more important, the contributions these sites can make to the archaeology of the region and of the world.

Aleksei P. Okladnikov: The Great Explorer of the Past is about the life and works of Aleksei P. Okladnikov (1908– 1981), a prominent archaeologist who spent more than 50 years studying prehistoric sites in various parts of the Soviet Union – mainly in Siberia and Central Asia as well as in Mongolia. Okladnikov made numerous fascinating discoveries in the 1930s, including the first Neanderthal remains in the USSR at Teshik Tash (Uzbekistan) and unique figurines at the Upper Palaeolithic site of Buret’ in the Angara River basin (Eastern Siberia). His research and achievements are presented on the background of ideological campaigns inspired by the Communist Party in the 1920s–1950s, a subject that is very rarely described in non-Russian sources. Particular attention is given to the debunking of the ‘Japhetic theory’ and the ‘new doctrine of language’ developed by Nikolai Y. Marr, an Oriental scholar and specialist in languages who in the 1920s–early 1930s was a formal leader of Soviet archaeology. Marr’s principles of linguistic studies were mechanically transmitted to several fields of the humanities, including archaeology, and were mandatory for every Soviet scholar. In 1950 an abrupt end to Marr’s theories was enacted by Josef Stalin. Details of these events – important for development of archaeology, ancient history, and linguistics in the USSR – were never previously described. The book is for archaeologists, historians, and everyone who is interested in the history of scholarship (particularly the humanities) in the twentieth century.

Aleksei P. Okladnikov: The Great Explorer of the Past (Volume II) is about the life and works of Aleksei P. Okladnikov (1908–1981), a prominent archaeologist who spent more than 50 years studying prehistoric sites in various parts of the Soviet Union and in Mongolia. This part of Okladnikov’s biography concentrates on his works in 1961–1981, when he was organiser (1961–1966) and since 1966 the Director of the Institute of History, Philology, and Philosophy, Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in Novosibirsk. This institute was a part of large-scale project of Akademgorodok (Academic Town) built in 1957– 1964, the unique phenomenon of Soviet science. In Novosibirsk, Okladnikov continued active fieldworks in Siberia, Russian Far East, Central Asia and Mongolia, and writing of books and articles on different subjects of archaeology and history. He also created the Novosibirsk school of archaeologists who continue to work in Siberia and the neighbouring regions of Asia until today. In 1974, Okladnikov with four colleagues participated in joint US–Soviet expedition to the Aleutian Islands, where W. S. Laughlin and he directed the excavations of early sites. The book is for archaeologists, historians, and everyone who is interested in the history of scholarship (particularly the humanities) in the twentieth century.