This article examines Siberia's increasingly important role in the study of the emergence of pottery across northern Eurasia. The world's earliest pottery comes from Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer sites in East Asia. This material is typically seen as disconnected from later pottery traditions in Europe, which are generally associated with sedentary farmers. However, new evidence suggests that Asian and European pottery traditions may be linked to a Hyperborean stream of hunter-gatherer pottery dispersals that spanned eastern and western Asia, and introduced pottery into the prehistoric societies of northern Europe. As a potential bridge between the eastern and western early pottery traditions, Siberia's prehistory is therefore set to play an increasingly central role in one of world archaeology's most important debates.

This introduction provides an overview of academic research and current practice relating to stakeholder dialogue around oil and gas development in the Russian North, Siberia and the Russian Far East. We discuss the two main strands of analysis in this special issue: (a) regulation and impact assessment; and (b) relationship-building in practice, with a particular focus on indigenous communities. We argue that an effective regulatory framework, meaningful dialogue, and imaginative organization of stakeholder relations are required to minimize negative impacts and maximize benefits from oil and gas projects. Self-interest, mistrust, and a lack of collective agency frequently lead to ineffective planning and heightened tensions in relations. We identify lessons to be learned from partnerships and initiatives already established in Sakhalin and Western Siberia, despite the lack of a stable legal framework to govern relations. This issue focuses on the academic-practitioner interface, emphasizing the importance of practical application of academic research and the value of non-academic contributions to academic debates.

Tyvan conceptions of spirit masters, their attributed domains of knowledge, and their places of devotion show signs of an adaptive function. Drawing from current research in the cognitive and evolutionary ecological studies of religion, I analyze interview data collected in the Tyva Republic during the summer of 2009 and construct an interpretation for why the ritual stone cairn (ovaa) tradition evolved and persists in Central Asia. As spirit masters in Tyva are acutely concerned with sustained costs and most ovaa that people pass are on territories of non-kin, I argue that because of the ecology of the region, the ovaa practice evolved to provide places to signal solidarity to others. Given the logic of spirit masters' concerns and ritual practice at cairns and the ecological context in which they operate, these components of traditional Tyvan religion are adaptive insofar as they foster cooperation and social bonds.

This article examines changes in the migration system in the Russian North over the two decades since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the beginning of economic reforms using unpublished data from the Federal State Statistics Service of Russia. This is done by computing several measures of migration for selected northern regions: 1) measures of migration efficiency to determine the extent to which migration in the northern regions is redistributing the population; 2) migration transition probabilities to measure changes in the origins and destinations of migrants in the Russian North; and 3) the average distance of moves to determine the effects that increased costs of transportation have on migration. The regions examined in this article include Khanty-Mansi and Iamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and Magadan Oblast', and Murmansk Oblast'. The findings show that as the market has taken hold, regions of economic growth are becoming primary migration destinations for persons migrating both to and from the North.

The legal position of indigenous minorities in the Russian Federation is defined, first and foremost, by constitutional principles, which guarantee equal rights and freedoms to individuals and citizens. In reality, however, equality between indigenous minorities and other ethnic groups of the Russian Federation, in terms of the possibility of exercising their rights, depends largely on the conditions in which they live and conduct their livelihood activities. The rights of indigenous minorities are primarily concerned with preserving their ethnic identity, languages, culture, way of life, and livelihood activities. Additional safeguards are required to resolve contemporary issues related to the above.