Irina S. Zhushchikhovskaya, Yuriy G. Nikitin
Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of Far Eastern Peoples of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia(irina1zh@mail.ru; urgen55@yandex.ru)
Keywords: south of the Russian Far East, Paleometal period, pottery kilns, temperature and atmosphere firing regimes.
The article analyzes a pottery kiln’s remains excavated at the site of Chernyatino 2 in the Primorye district in the south of the mainland Russian Far East adjacent to the Korea peninsular and Northeast China. The kiln’s remains are attributed to the Krounovskaya culture of the Paleometal period and dated preliminary to the early 1st millennium AD. The kiln is characterized by: 1 – sub-rectangular plan of the floor deepened into the soil and sloped slightly; 2 – the fuel and firing sections separated by a low step and located at different levels; 3 – small size; 3 – a tunnel-like clay dome on a plant frame. Lots of the destroyed dome fragments were found near the sub-rectangular deepening. According to the results of pottery samples examination, in particularly the SEM analysis, the firing temperatures in the kiln were 750–900⁰ С. The kiln is the earliest pottery firing construction recorded so far in the south of the Russian Far East. Such kilns were invented in the Korea peninsular in the 3rd‑4th centuries AD.
