Russia / Saint PetersburgAt the Serteya II site, in a layer dating from the 5th–4th millennia BC, a spear shaft in the shape of a snake was found—an object unique to Stone Age culture, unparalleled in Russian archaeology.
By skillfully manipulating the wood grain, the craftsman managed to imitate the scales and movements of a snake. The body has lateral cutouts, and at the end of the shaft is a head with an open mouth and burnt-out black eyes. Originally, a spearhead was inserted into the open mouth instead of a stinger. This spearhead was lost during a hunt or ritual on the shore of an ancient lake. This is evidenced by the archaeological context—the spearhead was found lodged in a layer of ancient seabed sediment.
Research into pile dwellings in northwestern Russia is inextricably linked with the name of Alexander Mikhailovich Miklyaev, a leading researcher in the Department of Archaeology of Eastern Europe and Siberia at the State Hermitage Museum, who discovered and first studied these settlements in 1963.
The current research of the North-West Expedition of the State Hermitage Museum is supported, among other things, by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 22-18-00086 “Between East and West: Hunter-gatherers of the lake region of Western Russia in the 7th–3rd millennia BC (economic strategies, cultural traditions, interregional connections and paleoecological conditions)”).
With the support of the History of the Fatherland Foundation, a field school was held as part of the project "Stone Age Pile Settlements in Northwest Russia: Underwater and Integrated Research. Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Discovery" as part of the expedition. Young people from St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Kazan, Tyumen, Veliky Novgorod, Moscow, Vologda, and Omsk participated in the school.
St. PetersburgAt the Serteya II site, in a layer dating from the 5th–4th millennia BC, a spear shaft in the shape of a snake was found—an object unique to Stone Age culture, unparalleled in Russian archaeology.
By skillfully manipulating the wood grain, the craftsman managed to imitate the scales and movements of a snake. The body has lateral cutouts, and at the end of the shaft is a head with an open mouth and burnt-out black eyes. Originally, a spearhead was inserted into the open mouth instead of a stinger. This spearhead was lost during a hunt or ritual on the shore of an ancient lake. This is evidenced by the archaeological context—the spearhead was found lodged in a layer of ancient seabed sediment.
Research into pile dwellings in northwestern Russia is inextricably linked with the name of Alexander Mikhailovich Miklyaev, a leading researcher in the Department of Archaeology of Eastern Europe and Siberia at the State Hermitage Museum, who discovered and first studied these settlements in 1963.
The current research of the North-West Expedition of the State Hermitage Museum is supported, among other things, by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 22-18-00086 “Between East and West: Hunter-gatherers of the lake region of Western Russia in the 7th–3rd millennia BC (economic strategies, cultural traditions, interregional connections and paleoecological conditions)”).
With the support of the History of the Fatherland Foundation, a field school was held as part of the project "Stone Age Pile Settlements in Northwest Russia: Underwater and Integrated Research. Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Discovery" as part of the expedition. Young people from St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Kazan, Tyumen, Veliky Novgorod, Moscow, Vologda, and Omsk participated in the school.