Amnya settlement

The Amnya complex (Russian: , romanized: gorodishche Amnya) is an archaeologicalfortified settlement site near the Amnya River in the lower Ob basin of western Siberia, dating to the early Neolithic and Chalcolithic. It comprises two sections, Amnya I and Amnya II, each a series of ten pit-houses of varying sizes about 50 meters apart. They are built atop a steep escarpment formerly overlooking a river, now adjacent to a series of peat bogs. Unlike Amnya II, Amnya I has significant defensive earthworks in the form of banks and ditches. Although the region had been occupied since the Mesolithic, the first fortifications were built at Amnya I some time after 6100 BCE, preceding a main settlement phase for both sites for much of the 6th millennium. The houses were frequently destroyed by fire, linked to endemic violent conflicts in the region. Both settlements were abandoned before a period of reoccupation during the 4th millennium BCE. Amnya I is one of the oldest known fortified settlements, as well as the northernmost Stone Age fort. Built by a hunter-gatherer population, Amnya I significantly predates the arrival of agriculture in the region. The sites were first excavated in 1987, with later excavations taking place in 1993, 2000, and 2019. A related Neolithic site, Kirip-Vis-Yurgan-2, has been linked to the Amnya culture due to similarities in recovered artifacts.

Although typically associated with agrarian and pastoralist societies, a long archaeological tradition of fortification building is present among hunter-gatherers of the Western Siberia taiga, with nearly one hundred known sites over an 8000-year period stretching from the Neolithic to the Russian conquest of the 16th and 17th centuries CE. The historical emergence of a significant population and sociopolitical diversity among hunter-gatherer groups in the area has been linked to the abundance of game in the area. These resources lent themselves to storage and transport: game such as elk and reindeer could be smoked or frozen, and fish could be dried, ground to meal, or made into fish oil. Although Western Siberia was sparsely inhabited during the regional Mesolithic, regional groups underwent significant societal and cultural formation c.6000 BCE, with a number of Neolithic sites containing pit-houses, earthen fortifications such as embankments and ditches, and later innovations such as pottery. Eight fortified sites dating to the Stone Age are attested in Western Siberia, the earliest known fortifications in Northern Eurasia. Kholms, large earthen mounds frequently containing human skulls and figurines, are also attested in the region during this period, interpreted as ritualistic or sacrificial sites. The regional fortifications are situated on high promontories and ridges overlooking low-lying areas. These sites typically comprised a central dwelling or complex fortified with earthworks and palisades, adjacent to a cluster of additional pit-houses. With some later exceptions, this fort building tradition largely evaporated during the Chalcolithic c.4000 BCE, before reviving as a series of individually fortified dwellings during the early Bronze Age.

The Amnya complex is situated at the edge of a promontory 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles) southeast of the village of Kazym in the Beloyarsky District of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. The complex is split between two sites (Amnya I and Amnya II) roughly 50 meters (160 ft) apart. Amnya I, at the tip of the promontory, comprises a group of ten pit-houses surrounded by a series of raised banks and ditches enclosing the construction. Wooden palisades were erected along the ditches. Amnya II also comprises ten pit houses, although without any fortification. Although the site currently overlooks peat bogs, i

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).