The materials from the excavations conducted by ISU archaeologists became the basis for a scientific article published in a prestigious scientific journal. The work was carried out in 2000 and 2001 on the territory of the Ust-Khayta I archeological site, on the bank of the Belaya River, approximately 120 kilometers from Irkutsk. The excavations were led by Nikolai Savelyev, Candidate of Sciences in History.

The article was published in the prestigious French scientific journal L’Anthropologie, which is listed in the second quartile. One of the co-authors of the work was the late Nikolai Saveliev, Candidate of Sciences in History, employee of the Scientific Research Center “Baikal Region”, head of the Laboratory of Archaeology, Ethnology, Problems of Paleoecology and Human Evolution (1970-2024), associate professor of the Department of Archaeology, Ethnology and History of the Ancient World. The authors suggested that the ancient people who lived at this site about 12 000-10 750 years ago used dogs for hunting.

During the main excavations in 2000, archaeologists of Irkutsk State University discovered a large number of unequipped hearths, from which they retrieved several hundred artifacts: animal bones and fragments of stone tools. Dog bones were found during additional excavations in 2001.

You can read more about the findings on the RSF website.