Ethnocultural Landscape of the Poltsevskaya Culture of Eastern Primorye (A Case Study of Metal Products of the Mikhailovsky Settlement)
Based on the data about the Mikhailovsky settlement, the paper reveals the ethnocultural landscape of the Poltsevskaya culture of Eastern Primorye. The key role of the Poltsevskaya culture in the ethnocultural history of the Far East was strongly determined by its chronological position which coincided with a new historical period - the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. It is established that the Mikhailovsky settlement existed in the sixth century, i.e., in the era of the Migration Period. This is the first archaeological site of the Poltsevskaya culture of the Early Middle Ages in Primorye. The prototypes of metal products (shell plates, arrowheads, knives, chisels) were found in the Poltsevskaya culture of the Amur region, and their analogies were discovered in the Smolninskaya culture of Primorye. It is found out that the population of the Poltsevskaya culture was preserved until the sixth century AD inclusive, and its development continued under new historical conditions. The expansion of the Mohe tribes during the Migration Period to Primorye and the Amur region contributed to the formation of the new ethnocultural landscape. The Mohe people, i.e., Manchu-Tungus, lived in Eastern Primorye together with the population of the Poltsevskaya culture. New ethnocultural population groups were formed among the Manchu-Tungus people due to assimilative processes that combined Poltsevskaya and Mohe traditions (Blagoslovenninskaya and Nayfeldskaya groups of sites prove this fact). In the early thirteenth century, the mountain settlements of the Jurchens of the Eastern Xia (1215-1234) appeared there: Skalistoe and Shcherbakovskoye. However, it is not known whether the population of the Poltsevkskaya culture remained or whether it was displaced to the lower reaches of the Amur. The traditions of the Poltsevksaya culture were traced through the metal products of the Paleo-Asiatic peoples of the Far East (the Nivkhs) from the Lower Amur and Sakhalin.