Cherkasskaya-5 site and its place in the Early Neolithic on the Middle Don River

The paper introduces materials of Cherkasskaya-5 site, located on the Middle Don River in the Pavlovsky district of the Voronezh Region. Under the two-meter thickness of the lake-alluvial layers, more than a thousand pieces of finds have been ceramics, stone, bone products and osteology. While analyzing the materials of the monument a ceramic and flint complex of the Early Neolithic appearance have been distinguished (7–6 thousand BC). The received radiocarbon dates, the data of technical and technological analysis and the features of ornamentation, ceramics, the typology of stone and bone inventory, help to find one of the possible ways of Neolithization of the Middle Don, in which the leading role belongs to the steppe component. Paleozoological analysis showed that the osteological collection is dominated by the bones of birds (64,4% of all bones), there are mammals (21,8%), fish (9,7%), turtle marsh (4,1%). Among domestic mammals domestic species (dog, horse, pig, sheep) are identified. However, the presence of late Neolithic and Eneolithic (srednedonskaya, dnepro-donetskaya, nizhnedonskaya, and srednestogovskaya cultures) in the ceramics layer leaves open the question of the domestic animal species belonging to the early Neolithic. The material of the site makes it possible to characterize this place as a series of seasonal short-term specialized sites intended for conducting network fishing, hunting for waterfowl, catching turtles and collecting shellfish as well as for processing the products of fishing and hunting in the Neolithic age.