Neolithic materials from the settlement and burial ground of Vasilievsky Kordon 27 on the Upper Don (research in 2020-2021)

The purpose of the paper is to publish ceramic and stone collections of artifacts from the Neolithic era from the multilayer settlement and burial ground Vasilievsky Kordon 27. The settlement is located on the right bank of the Voronezh River (Don Basin) within the Dobrovsky District of the Lipetsk Region. Excavations of 323 m² have been explored in the settlement. Previously, a large amount of Eneolithic ceramics was discovered: the Srednestogovskaya and Volosovskaya cultures, and Ksizov-type utensils. For the first time in 2020, an economic object with only Early Neolithic materials was discovered at the site. We have received a collection of Early Neolithic pottery, which, undoubtedly, has similarities in various ways with the dishes of the Elshanskaya, Karamyshevskaya and Srednedonskaya early Neolithic cultures. Preliminarily, we are inclined to attribute this collection to the earliest stage in the formation of the Srednedonskaya culture in the first half of the 6^th millennium BC. Most of the stone collection of the monument can be attributed to the Neolithic period: chopping tools, a fragment of an arrowheads, a stone shuttle. The final cultural and chronological attribution of the stone inventory is difficult in view of the fact that the excavations of 2020–2021 were laid on the outskirts of a multi-layered monument, which suffers most from the annual fire plowing.