In an old potato field near the east bank of the Ob River in Novosibirsk with remains Neolithic and late Bronze Age settlements, a Bronze Age burial site, and a single medieval burial, has now been found a 5,000 year old figurine featuring what appears to be a feathered headdress.
     Feather headgear is not familiar in archeological sites in ancient Siberia, and leading Archeologist Vyacheslav Molodin has called this and other finds "absolutely unique".
     Dr Natalia Basova, head of the expedition, says other unexpected finds include a figurine of a bird made of bone, and four anthropomorphic figurines made of mammoth tusk, sandstone, birch burl, and an unknown organic material.
     "The anthropomorphic figurines were most likely sewn onto clothes as they have holes. There is also a figurine of a moose made of shale, found in the wall of an excavation hole, not in a burial.
     The preliminary dating of the site is up to the end of the third millennium BEC, but Neolithic stone implements were found, possibly as old as the fourth millennium BCE.
     The excavations are more complex because the natural layering of the soil was disturbed by a giant wave that washed over the site some 4,000 years ago, caused by an earthquake. In more modern times it was a potato field before soil was removed, and debris from construction sites and silt dredged from the river dumped there.

Edited from The Siberian Times (20 October 2017)