Early Neolithic stone industry of the Upper Don

Features of the flood plain settlements of the river Don watershed and its tributaries is the fact that almost all of them are multi-layered. Until recently it was not possible to talk about the Early Neolithic stone industry of the Upper Don. All conclusions about Early Neolithic material culture in this territory were done by A.T. Sinyuk, based on the Middle-Don site. He described tool industry as blade technique. The paper mentions the most important sites and gives a review of Early Neolithic stone industry of the Upper Don. Nowadays there are materials of the 4 Early Neolithic cultures on the Upper Don territory: Middle-Don (72 sites), Karamyshevo (26 sites), Upper-Volga (4 sites) and Elshanskaya (4 sites) cultures. The earliest materials in the research area date VI mill. cal BC. The data on the stone industries of the Elshanskaya and Upper-Volga cultures in the Upper Don are absent. There are stone collections, which could be connected only with the Middle-Don and Karamyshevo Early Neolithic cultures. This industry could be described as flake technique.