Novopokrovka nephrite slat-lures

блесны

Source term: блесны; nephrite slat-lures; grooved spoon/lure objects; 匕形器 in Chinese diffusion literature

блесны (blesny): 'spoon-lures' — the excavators' fishing-lure reading

Found in 1961 four kilometres outside the Amur village of Novopokrovka, a Neolithic settlement had been all but ploughed away, yet its surface still gave up two slender slats of whitish-green nephrite — nine and seven centimetres long, barely over a centimetre wide — each with one face scooped concave and the other left convex, and a neat biconically drilled hole through one end; a third survived as a fragment. Okladnikov and Derevyanko matched them, form for form, to the famous 'lures' from Kondon far down the Amur, and the match helped define a single Lower Amur grooved-slat type across the basin. These are the only Neolithic pieces in the Russian series with published measurements, which makes them the reference specimens for the whole class — and close cousins in outline of the bi-shaped jade blades of Xinglongwa China, beside which the Chinese diffusion literature indeed cites them.

В районе с. Новопокровского … были найдены две прекрасно отшлифованные блёсны нижнеамурского типа из беловато-зелёного нефрита.

In the area of the village of Novopokrovskoye … two beautifully polished lures of the Lower Amur type, of whitish-green nephrite, were found.

Istoriya Sibiri, vol. 1, p. 750

Particulars

Object

Two slender grooved slats of whitish-green nephrite, each concave on one face and convex on the other, with a biconically drilled hole at one end — 9 × 1.2 cm and 7 × 1 cm — and a 5 × 2 cm fragment of a third, heavier slat.

Function

Published as fishing spoon-lures.