an archaeological culture of hunters and fishermen inhabiting what is now the Karelian ASSR at the end of the third millennium to the end of the first millennium b.c. (in the Neolithic period, the Bronze Age, and the early Iron Age). In the Neolithic the culture was characterized by crude implements made of shale and quartz, local thick-walled pottery of the “Sperrings” type (named after the small Finnish village near which the pottery was first found), and pit-comb pottery of the Volga-Oka type. In the second and first millennia b.c. the working of stone implements improved, and thin-walled pottery with an admixture of asbestos in the clay became prevalent. The production of copper and copper articles was known in the area from the middle of the second millennium b.c. and iron, from the fourth or third century b.c. It is conjectured that the creators of the Karelian culture were tribes that were formed as result of the merging of the local population (probably, forefathers of the Lapps) with proto-Finno-Ugric peoples who penetrated into the area in the sixth to third millennia b.c. from the south and southwest.