Abstract
Obsidian objects were discovered while studying archaeological Stone Age sites of the North-Eastern Caucasus. They were discovered at the Eneolithic settlement of Ginchi in the deep, mountainous part of the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. This place is located 25 km NW of the city of Makhachkala on the sandy blowout near the village of Almalo. The obsidian items are rare and exotic. During excavations, one of the stone finds visually differed from the prevailing flint finds and was identified as obsidian. We compared the sample from the Almalo 1 archaeological site with samples from the previously studied Zayukovo deposit using microscopic methods. A comparative study of the microstructure and composition of obsidian samples using optical and scanning electron microscopes with an attachment for energy dispersive analysis concluded that the obsidian raw material used to manufacture the plate from the collection in the Almalo 1 locality in coastal Dagestan comes from the Zayukovsky Obsidian deposit (Baksan) in the Central Caucasus. From this, it follows that the population of the Caspian lowland of Dagestan in a segment of the Neolithic period had active cultural contact with the inhabitants of the Central Caucasus. We showed the possibilities of microscopic research methods for the archaeological diagnostics of obsidian.
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Tselmovich, V.A. (2023). Microstructure and Composition of Obsidian in the Neolithic Collection of the Almalo 1 Locality in Dagestan as an Indication of the Source of Raw Materials and Directions of Cultural Ties. In: Ankusheva, N.N., Chechushkov, I.V., Epimakhov, A.V., Ankushev, M.N., Ankusheva, P.S. (eds) Geoarchaeology and Archaeological Mineralogy—2021. Springer Proceedings in Earth and Environmental Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16544-3_27
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