EA-NOVOPOKROVKA-001 - archaeological find

Novopokrovka / Novopokrovskoe nephrite blesny lead

Russia - Middle Amur - Amur Oblast; Novopokrovka or Novopokrovskoe route - East Asia - Russian Far East

Function not recorded Candidate only

In 1961, four kilometres outside the Amur village of Novopokrovka, Okladnikov and Derevyanko excavated 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. They matched them, form for form, to the famous 'lures' from Kondon seven hundred kilometres 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

Object

блесны; nephrite slat-lures; grooved spoon/lure objects; 匕形器 in Chinese diffusion literature. Specimens/count: Okladnikov/Derevyanko 1973: two complete/near-complete examples plus one fragment; Bibliotekar Amur-Neolithic page: three nephrite blesny. Material: nephrite; whitish-green nephrite reported. Dimensions: 9 x 1.2 cm; 7 x 1 cm; fragment 5 x 2 cm preserved in Okladnikov/Derevyanko 1973; Bibliotekar source gives form not dimensions. Perforation: biconically drilled line/string hole at one end on the complete examples. Context: Neolithic settlement 4 km from Novopokrovka / area of Novopokrovskoe; site largely ploughed but intact tested area reported; exact object feature context not stated. Date: Lower Amur Neolithic; no radiocarbon published — placed roughly in the 5th–3rd millennium BCE by lure-form analogy.

Function

Excavated and published as fishing lures of the Lower Amur type (Okladnikov & Derevyanko 1973); the atlas keeps that baseline.

Map confidence

low - Approximate locality or municipality/site-cluster anchor from the local dossier; refine before public release.

Source location

Okladnikov and Derevyanko 1973, pp. 124-125

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