№ 7 (2023)

Arctic territories of the North-East of Russia, promising for the findings of fossil remains of mammoth fauna have been surveyed by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The application of such vehicles enables identifying the signs that may indirectly mark accumulations of bone remains, in particular, remote inspection of the coastal bluff s formed by thermal erosion of the so-called edoma sediments — highly icy (containing more than 50–90% ice), organic-rich (containing more than 1–2% organic matter), silty, sandy loam, and fi ne-sand late Pleistocene sediments. The use of a drone makes it possible to monitor the state of such sediments and detect fresh washouts and rockslides, which expose buried bone remains. The use of UAVs is promising for detecting and surveying secondary collectors of bone remains — steep river bends of small streams, bottoms of reservoirs to a depth of 0.5–1.5 m, as well as inaccessible coastal parts of reservoirs, in which bone remains may be uncovered during the melting of edomaceous sediments.

One of the most mysterious periods in the history of Sindica, the area of the modern Anapsky District of Krasnodar Krai and adjacent territories, is still the Migration period, which peaked in the middle of the fi rst millennium AD. New data on the history of Sindica at this period is provided by the study of a major site of this epoch, the ancient fortress of Verkhnegostagayevskoye, located on the watershed between the Kotlama and Gostagayka rivers. The fortifi cation and stratigraphy of the site and the location of its key objects provide an ides about the signifi cance of this military and political center, the circumstances of its construction, and the history of the fortress.