Viskalin A.V.

Key words: Mezolithic, Neolithic, mid-Volga, Kama region, pieces with oblique retouched truncation, cultural processes.
The article studies the spatial and temporal distribution of pieces with oblique retouched truncation in the mid-Volga and Kama regions. The pieces with oblique retouched truncation and associated items of “steppe” appearance were brought to the territory at the end of the Boreal period by population groups of the Zhekalgan and Eastaiskaya cultures from the North Caspian region, who had moved to the forest-steppes due to the ecological crisis. At the beginning of the Atlantic period, under the influence of Early Neolithic tribes, the forest-steppe population with pieces with oblique retouched truncation and trapezes moved deeper into the forest zone, where they mixed with the local tribes of the Kama and Russko-Lugovskaya cultures. The fact that in the Early Neolithic the complex of “steppe features” disappeared from the everyday life of tribes with stroke-ornamented ceramics in the mid-Volga and Urals regions could signify another migration. At the end of the Neolithic another population group with pieces with oblique retouched truncation but without trapezes arrived to the Lower Kama, presumably from the Trans-Urals. They left stroke-ornamented ceramics of the Tatarskiy Azibey type.