Classification and chronology of the northwestern group of Mohei monuments of the Razdolnaya basin in Southern Primorye

Abstract

Based on field and archival sources, the article proposes mapping, classification, and dating of monuments of the northwestern group of Mohe settlements of the Razdolnaya basin, which is the connecting waterway of Manchuria and Primorye. Mohe settlements are represented by three types: villages (settlements), hillforts, and burial grounds. The appearance of Polzevskea-type ceramics, straight-backed iron knives, and flat arrowheads in Mohe settlements indicate contact between the Polzevskya and Moheskya culture, as a result of which a syncretic earliest blessed local variant in the Mohe culture was formed.

Dating artifacts have been identified: black pottery vessels of the Eastern Jin dynasties (317-371), Sui (589-618), found at Chernyatino 5, Sinelnikovo-1, as well as vessels with an oblique mouth (with a drain), fixed on Mohe monuments, according to¹⁴C, in the fifth century AD. A vessel with an oblique mouth (with a drain) in China in the Tunschen culture was used to rescue water from a boat. In Primorye and the Amur region, vessels with an oblique mouth first appeared with the arrival of the Mohe. They are indicators of a change in the form of farming among the Mohe and record the beginning of the transition from a nomadic form of farming to fishing using a boat. The inevitability of this transition is due to new geophysical conditions — the mountain taiga zone and the main rivers through which the territories were developed. A new form of economy appeared among the Mohe in the fifth century and persists among the Tunguso-Manchus until modern times, whose economy is based on fishing, hunting, and gathering.