What is the Bronze Age definition of history. Bronze Age

At the beginning of the II millennium BC. the disintegration of the Circumpontian metallurgical province is completed. The entire former system of cultural and industrial relations in Northern Eurasia is being rebuilt. The boundaries of new ethno-cultural formations and production systems take on a completely different shape in the Late Bronze Age. Three metallurgical provinces are connected with the spaces of the former northern block of the Circumpontian province (the Balkan-Carpathian region, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus): Eurasian, European and Caucasian. The centers of metallurgy and metalworking in the south of Eastern and partly Western Siberia entered the system of the Central Asian province, and the southern regions Central Asia- in the Iranian-Afghan system. These processes were accompanied by the disappearance of old cultures, active migrations of large groups of the population, the formation of new cultures and communities, which radically changed the entire course of ethnocultural history in the northern zone of Eurasia.

The formation and development of cultures of the Late Bronze Age were largely associated with landscape and climatic changes. The early and final phases of the development of these crops take place against the background of a particularly sharp climate aridization.

In the late Bronze Age, a significant expansion of the zone of cultures with producing forms of economy takes place, especially in the northern, northeastern and eastern directions. The world of metal-bearing cultures reaches the European North and covers the gigantic expanses of Northern and Central Asia. Throughout this zone, the technology of manufacturing tin bronzes as the leading type of copper-based alloys and thin-walled casting of tools and weapons is spreading rapidly and everywhere. Hundreds of new deposits of copper and tin ore were discovered here. In the Donetsk Ridge, in the Caucasus and the Urals, in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, the Sayano-Altai, the Baikal region and Transbaikalia, the scale of mining and the production of copper and bronze have grown significantly. In the famous Kargaly mines in the Southern Urals and in the copper ore deposits of Dzhezkazgan and Kenkazgan in Kazakhstan, several million tons of ore were mined over 3-4 centuries, from which a huge amount of copper was smelted. Trade and exchange of metal, as in previous eras, was the most important factor in the development of cultures of the Late Bronze Age.

In this era, in most of the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe - from the Dnieper and the Seversky Donets in the west to the Minusinsk basin in the east - a cattle-breeding economic and cultural type of a producing economy was formed. The basis of the livelihood of the cultures of this zone was, first of all, pastoral cattle breeding, but by no means agriculture, as was previously thought. The endless and rich grasslands of the steppe and forest-steppe made it possible to graze a huge amount of cattle and small cattle and horses, as well as to create an adequate supply of fodder for the winter.

Transhumance and semi-nomadic cattle breeding was practiced mainly in the mountainous and semi-desert regions of the Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Central and Central Asia. Agriculture, and on a limited scale, appears in this part of Eurasia only at the end of the Bronze Age. The cultures of the Northern Black Sea region, the Caucasus and the south of Central Asia inherited the agricultural and cattle-breeding economic and cultural type, which was formed here at the dawn of the early metal era. The northern forest-steppe and the south of the forest zone are included in the area of ​​a diversified economy with a dynamic combination of producing and appropriating occupations. The latter remain the basis of life support for the population of the deep forest and taiga regions of Eastern Europe and Siberia, differing only in the mobile or sedentary way of life of hunter and fisher societies.

The Late Bronze Age is the time of active ethno- and cultural-genetic processes in Northern Eurasia. Many archaeologists and linguists believe that it is in the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe that the further division of the Indo-European language family takes place - the separation of the Indo-Iranian group, identified in modern science with the population of the Srubnaya and Andronovo communities. In Western and Central Europe, another block of cultures is being formed (the so-called cultures of the fields of burials or cultures of the fields of burial urns), with which the origins of the German-Balto-Slavic proto-linguistic unity are connected. In the forest zone of Eastern Europe and Western Siberia, an array of pre-Finno-Ugric peoples was concentrated. The borderland of the forest and the forest-steppe was a natural boundary that separated and connected the cultures of the ancient Finno-Ugric peoples and the Indo-Iranians. The ancestral home of the peoples of the Altaic language family was in Southern Siberia, in the regions of the Sayano-Altai. The stages of the history of the North Caucasian language family, the ancestral home of which is localized by linguists in the Near Asian region, remain debatable.

In the ethnic history of the Old World, a colossal role belongs to the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe, which were the ancestral home of the peoples of the Indo-Iranian language group. It is with the carriers of the latter that it is legitimate to identify the term "Aryans, Aryans", which served as the self-name of a certain Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European tribes, then divided into Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian branches. Many scholars link the death of the ancient Indian civilizations of Mohenjodaro and Harappa with the invasion of the northern steppe peoples. Migration and infiltration of speakers of Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian dialects was long
a process that was not accompanied by a change in the aboriginal population on the territory of Central Asia, Afghanistan, Hindustan and Iran. At the same time, the newcomer tribes assimilated the way of life and culture of the local peoples. Nevertheless, migration routes are archaeologically recorded in the material culture of the aboriginal population. This is primarily the appearance of molded ceramics, metal products, burial complexes, new plots and images in rock art, characteristic of the northern steppe peoples, as well as the spread of wheeled transport and the cult of the horse.

Echoes of active migration processes on the territory of Eurasia at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age are recorded in Hittite documents, Vedic texts, and the Iranian Avesta. They brought to us the first written information about the ancient Indo-Aryans and Indo-Iranians, which, along with linguistic data, are used to reconstruct the vocabulary associated with the material and spiritual culture of the tribes of the Late Bronze Age. According to studies, these tribes were engaged in cattle breeding and agriculture; special importance was attached to horse breeding; chariots were used in military affairs. They had developed metallurgy and other crafts, a complex social and hierarchical structure of society, the concept of "king" was used. The title of the ruler meant literally "ruler of the claws." In relation to the privileged military nobility, the term "standing on a chariot" was used. The class of priests stood out, which carried out the regulation of the system of legal and moral and ethical norms through complex rites and rituals.

THE LATE BRONZE AGE WITHIN THE EURASIAN METALLURGICAL PROVINCE

The Late Bronze Age within Russia and the former USSR is associated with the formation and development of the Eurasian Metallurgical Province (EAMP). The time of existence of the cultures included in it - XVIII / XVII - IX / VIII centuries. BC. (within the traditional chronology). In its heyday, the EAMP territory stretched from the Left-bank Ukraine in the west to the Sayan-Altai in the east, from the foothills of the Caucasus and the oases of Central Asia in the south to the forest regions of Siberia and Eastern Europe in the north.

The creation of such a colossal system was due to the industrial and ethno-cultural consolidation of the mobile pastoral tribes of the steppe and forest-steppe and the settled population of the forest zone. The closest and longest interaction between the forest (primordial-Ugric) and steppe (Indo-Iranian) peoples took place just in the Late Bronze Age. Most likely, it was at this time that the mass introduction of vocabulary related to metallurgy, cattle breeding and agriculture into the languages ​​of the ancient Finno-Ugric peoples, and the primitive-Ugric language into Indo-Iranian speech took place.

The following categories of metal products become common and most used in the main centers of the Eurasian province: 1) axes; 2) Celts with lateral and forehead ears; 3) spearheads with slots and without slots on the wings of the pen; 4) socketed and petiolate arrowheads; 5) double-edged knives and daggers with a flat and rod-shaped handle with and without a stop; 6) socketed and flat adzes and chisels; 7) massive sickle billhooks; 8) a variety of jewelry (bracelets, pendants, rings, hryvnias, etc.).

Inventory of the Abashev cultural and historical community:
1 - plan of the Pepkinsky barrow; 2 - reconstruction of the appearance of the Abashevsky man; 3 - options for women's hats; 4 - pierce and plaques; 5 - spectacle pendant; 6-12 - ceramics; 13 - clay mold for casting an ax; 14 - drilled ax; 15, 16 - wedge-shaped ax and chisel; 17-19 - arrowheads; 20- ax; 21, 22 - knives; 23- plow; 24, 25 - flat and socket adzes; 26 - spear tip; 27 - clay crucible; 28, 29 - bracelets; 30 - hryvnia; 31 - harpoon (3-5, 20-26, 28-31 - copper and arsenic bronze; 14-18 - stone; 19 - bone)

In the development of cultures and centers of metalworking in the Eurasian province, several chronological periods are outlined - the phase of addition (XVIII/XVTI-XVI centuries BC); the formation in the steppe and forest-steppe of the Srubno-Andronovo block of cultures and the stabilization of the main production centers (XVI-XV/XIV centuries BC); restructuring of the cultures of the Srubno-Andronovo world and the relocation of the main centers of metalworking to the forest and forest-steppe zones (XV/XIV-XII/XI centuries BC); the last phase is associated with the growing processes of destruction and disintegration of the Eurasian province (XII/XI-IX/VIII centuries BC).

In the early phase of the EAMP, two large blocks of crops and production centers are formed. The first of them is associated with the Babinskaya, Abashevskaya, Sintashta, Petrovsky and Early Rubbing cultures. The activities of the metallurgical and metal-working hearths of the block covered significant areas of the Eastern European steppes and forest-steppes, the Southern Trans-Urals, Northern and Central Kazakhstan.

The second block of cultures of producing centers is localized in the mountains and foothills of the Sayano-Altai, the West Siberian forest-steppe, the Trans-Ural taiga, and the forests of Eastern Europe and is associated primarily with the Seima-Turbino sites.
The ore base of the first block of hearths was both the previously exploited deposits of cuprous sandstones in the Cis-Urals, and the newly developed primary deposits of the Southern Trans-Urals, Mugodzhar, northern and central regions of Kazakhstan. It is noteworthy that the Caucasus ceased to serve as the most important source of copper and bronze for the steppe and forest-steppe cultures of Eastern Europe, as it was in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. Arsenic bronze, still noticeable in the Abashevo and Sintashta hearths, as well as silver began to be smelted in the Urals (Tash-Kazgan and Nikolskoye mines). The Seima-Turbino centers used tin and tin-arsenic bronzes. The appearance of these light alloys became possible with the discovery and development of the richest copper and tin ore sources in the north of the Altai mountain country. In the subsequent phases of the development of the Eurasian province, Rudny Altai will become the most important supplier of tin, a precious ligature of antiquity, to the trans-Eurasian trade routes.

In the western centers of the EAMP, the manufacture of tools and weapons continues, in which the traditional set characteristic of the production of the previous Circumpontian province is easily recognized: socketed axes, flat and grooved adzes and chisels, double-edged shank knives and daggers, forged spearheads, etc. The production of sickles begins. - billhooks and lamellar sickle-shaped tools, the first cast objects with a "blind" (i.e. not through) sleeve (spearheads) appear. In the Seima-Turbino centers, socketed axes-celts, celts-blades, adzes, spearheads and darts, as well as single-edged and plated double-edged knives and daggers are cast.

Among the first block of cultures and producing centers of the early Late Bronze Age, the leading role belonged to the Abashev cultural and historical community. The name comes from the village of Abashevo in Chuvashia, near which barrows of this type were first studied. Range - mostly forest-steppe spaces of Eastern Europe from the Seversky Donets in the west to the interfluve of the Urals and Tobol - in the east, in the south - with access to the steppe to the bend of the Volga and Don; individual burial grounds are known in the forest zone. In common, the Don-Volga, Middle Volga and Ural cultures stand out.

The monuments of the Abashev community date back to the first third of the 2nd millennium BC. In its development, early and late periods are outlined. However, in the center of the Russian Plain, in addition, a layer of proto-Abashevo antiquities, belonging to the Middle Bronze Age, stands out. Its formation took place in interaction southern cultures pit-catacomb circle and northern - areas of battle axes and corded ceramics. At the beginning of the II millennium BC. Abashevites settled in the east (Southern Urals) and northeast (Middle Volga region). The late period is characterized by active contacts with the population of the Early Rubbing (Pokrovskaya) and Sintashta cultures. The monuments are represented by settlements, burial grounds, ore workings (Tash-Kazgan and Nikolskoye), treasures of metal products (Verkhne-Kizilsky, Krasnoyarsk, Dolgaya Griva).

Abashevtsy usually settled along the banks of rivers, on elevated capes, on dunes, rarely on the tops of rocky ledges (Urals). Settlements with a thick cultural layer and remains of ground, slightly deepened, less often dugout and semi-dugout structures, sometimes surrounded by ditches, have been found in the Don basin and in the Southern Urals. The buildings were constructed using a frame (pillar) structure; roof - gable or four-slope; inside - a hearth or several hearths of an open type, household and sacrificial pits, sometimes a well.

Burials - from one to several - were made under round or oval mounds. In the Don region and in the Samara Volga region, burials in earlier burial mounds, as well as ground burials, are known. On the Middle Volga and the Oka, mounds were sometimes surrounded by ring ditches and pole fences; stone fences were built in the Southern Urals. Burial grounds are mostly small; large ones - up to 50 (Pelengersky 1) and even 100 (Podkletnensky) barrows - are an exception. Burials were made in rectangular or oval pits, less often in chambers with wooden or stone wall cladding and sometimes covered with logs, planks or stone slabs. The buried - single, less often in pairs, rows and collective - were laid on their backs with bent legs, sometimes on their left side, in a slightly crouched position. There are cases of dissected and partial skeletons, as well as cenotaphs. The buried were accompanied by pottery, copper and silver jewelry, sometimes knives and awls, stone and bone products.

Among the Abashevo monuments, a single Pepkinsky barrow in the Volga region (Mari El) stands out. Three burials were unearthed under a low oval mound. One of them struck the researchers with its size and the picture that appeared after clearing. At the bottom of the trench (10.2 x 1.6 x 0.65-0.7 m) with a wooden ceiling and a birch bark bottom, the remains of 27 skeletons and two separately laid skulls were buried. All belonged to the men who died violent death and buried in a mass grave. Traces of severe injuries and mortal wounds were found on almost every skeleton - chopped and shot injuries inflicted by a copper ax and flint arrowheads. Some skulls have traces of incisions left, as anthropologists suggest, during the removal of scalps. One of the skeletons (a blacksmith-caster) was accompanied by a unique set of tools (clay mold for casting axes, crucibles, stone anvils, hammer, hammers and abrasives).

Inventory of "elite" Late Abashevo burials:
1-5 - ceramics; 6-8 - bone cheek-pieces; 9, 10 - stone arrowheads; 11 - ax; 12, 13 - spearheads; 14 - knife; 15 - adze; 16 - pommel-blade made of bone; 17 - stone mace; 18 - bone buckle (11-15 - copper and bronze)

Only at the late stage of the Abashevo community in the Middle Don region did burials appear with characteristic military equipment, sacrifices of horses, dogs, and small cattle (Kondrashkinsky, Selezni 2). Apparently, these are the graves of representatives of the elite of society - leaders, priests and their inner circle. They were accompanied by a specific set of signs of power, namely: stone maces, bone pommel-spatulas, copper battle axes, spearheads, knife-daggers, a chariot set (bone shield and disc-shaped cheek-pieces, belt distributors, belt buckles).

The material culture of the Abashevo population is original. Ceramics is represented by flat-bottomed pots, jars, bowls with shells in the dough. The bell-shaped and sharp-ribbed vessels with geometric ornamentation are original, especially magnificent on the burial utensils. A lot of metal tools were found - narrow-butted axes, flat adzes, spearheads with an open bushing, double-edged knives with a crosshair and interception, weakly curved sickle-shaped tools, fishing hooks and harpoons. Jewelry made of copper, silver and billon gives a bright color to the culture: bracelets, spectacle-shaped pendants made of wire, temple pendants in 1.5 turns, hryvnias, plaques, pierced spirals from a thin plate, but above all - cast sewn-on plaques-rosettes - a characteristic ethnographic a sign of the Abashevsky women's costume, especially the headdress. Peculiar stone (arrowheads, axes, hammers, pestles, anvils, etc.), bone (psalia with monolithic and plug-in spikes, buckles, fasteners, spatula tops, arrowheads, etc.) and clay (crucibles, models of wheels) products .

The life support system of the Abashev tribes was based on pastoral cattle breeding, metallurgy and metalworking, and was supplemented by other branches of economic activity: hunting, fishing, domestic crafts and gathering. There is no direct evidence of farming (i.e. the remains of cultivated cereals).

The activity of the Don metal-working and South Ural metallurgical centers is connected with the Abashev community. The second of them was the base and provided the population of the entire community with metal. The smelting and processing of “pure” and arsenic copper, as well as silver and billons, was carried out in specialized centers (Beregovsky, Tyubyaksky, etc.) in the bend of the river. Belaya and the foothills of the Urals, rich in forests.

In the processes of cultural genesis of the Late Bronze Age, the Abashev community, along with the Seima-Turbino community, played a pivotal role. In the area of ​​this community, a pastoral economic and cultural type and stereotypes of metallurgy and metalworking technology were formed, which took root in the steppe and forest-steppe of Eastern Europe, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan in the subsequent phases of the development of the Eurasian metallurgical province. The historical fate of the Don-Volga and Ural Abashevo cultures is directly related to the formation of the steppe and
forest-steppe cultures of the Volga-Ural region - Sintashta, early log and Petrovsky.

At the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, the Babinskaya culture played an important role in the cultural and historical processes in large areas of the steppe and forest-steppe from the Danube to the Volga. Due to the characteristic pottery with rollers, it is also called the culture of multi-wool ceramics. It is represented by hundreds of settlements and burial mounds, as well as treasures. It is assumed that among them is the famous Borodino (Bessarabian) treasure near Odessa. The core of culture is in the Dnieper-Donetsk interfluve, and its origins are in the late cultures of the Pit-Catacomb world, as well as the area of ​​battle axes and corded ceramics. The historical fate of the Babinskaya culture is connected with the formation of monuments of the Srubnaya and Sabatinovskaya cultures of this region.

Cultural and historical processes in the center of the Eurasian steppe belt in the first centuries of the 2nd millennium BC. associated with the transformation of the late pit-catacomb and Abashev antiquities. They led to the formation of the Sintashta, as well as the Petrovsky and early Rubbing cultures.

The Sintashta culture, named after the eponymous complex of monuments in the south of the Chelyabinsk region, stands out among the steppe block of cultures and production centers of the early Late Bronze Age with a number of striking features. Its range is compact - it is a small area (400 × 200 km) along the eastern slope of the Ural Range. About 20 fortified centers are known here (sometimes they are incorrectly called proto-cities) with the corresponding district (burial grounds, sanctuaries, settlements); the most famous are Sintashta, Arkaim, Ustye in the Chelyabinsk region and Aland in the Orenburg region. The rounded or rectangular form of defensive walls and ditches and the radial structure of densely built-up quarters give these centers the appearance of fortresses, resembling southern urbanized settlements (Altyn-depe, etc.) to a greater extent than ordinary steppe ones. The dispute about whether the Sintashta settlements were fortresses, shelters, sacred, metallurgical or shopping malls, is far from allowed. Most likely, they were multifunctional. Dwellings are built of clay and log frames, sometimes mud bricks. In the depths of the dwelling there were a well, a hearth, utility pits.

Sintashta mounds and ground burials (Sintashta, Krivoe Lake, Bolshekaragansky) are located on the edge of a terrace or on a watershed at the confluence of small rivers. Burials in mounds are located linearly or in a circle. In some cases, they overlap each other, forming longline complexes. Burials - individual or collective - were made in soil pits, side houses, catacombs, sometimes in wooden chambers covered with logs. The predominant position of the buried is slightly crouched on the left side; an extended position on the back with legs bent at the knees was also recorded.

The paramilitary nature of the Sintashta society is noteworthy. Extraordinary burials are known containing chariot complexes (the remains of two-wheeled war chariots, dug-in wheels, bone cheek-pieces). Often they were accompanied by the burial of 1-3 pairs of horses in the grave itself or in a special compartment. The male burials contain numerous weapons (copper and bronze battle axes, spearheads, daggers, stone maces, arrowheads, etc.). They contain a lot of tools (flat and grooved adzes and chisels, lamellar and sickle-shaped tools, knives, awls, fishing hooks and harpoons made of copper and bronze, stone hammers, abrasives, etc.), as well as jewelry and ceramics (pots with a wide mouth and pointed banks). Ornament in the form of grooves, triangles, rhombuses, meanders covered the entire vessel or most of it. There are two groups of vessels in size: small, up to 7 liters, and large, from 8 to 50 liters. The first ones were tableware, but in large ones they kept food and water, cooked food.

Sintashta culture:
1 - women's headdress (bronze, silver, beads, stone)', 2 - bead; 3 - mace; 4, 11, 13-16 - ceramics; 5 - pommel-blade made of bone; 6-9 - arrowheads; 10 - ax; 12 - bone psalium (2, 3, 6-10 - stone)

The Sintashta culture is characterized by a high level of development of house and pasture cattle breeding, metallurgy and metalworking. The main categories of products from the Sintashta metallurgical hearth were made according to the Circumpontic stereotypes. For casting blanks and subsequent forging of tools and weapons, mainly low-alloy arsenic bronze was used, as well as "pure" copper. An insignificant part of the items (knives and jewelry) is made of tin bronze and billon. The same recipes of alloys and the level of technology are typical for the territorially close Ural Abashevo centers.

Reconstruction of the burial chamber (Sintashta burial ground):
in the lower chamber - a funeral wagon with the remains of the deceased, in the middle - a burial
in the upper - burials of sacrificial animals, on top of the chamber - a sacrificial fire and a mound of a barrow

The nature of the funeral rite, the presence of fortified centers with complex fortifications, handicraft specialization suggest that the Sintashta tribes had a developed social structure. Three social groups are outlined: warriors, priests and ordinary community members.

The transformation of cultural formations in the Asian steppe at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age is, of course, associated with the initial Western impulse, as a result of which the post-Neolithic populations of this vast region adopted new economic and social stereotypes. The result was the formation of the Andronovo cultural and historical community. The name is given by the burial ground near the village of Andronovo in the Minusinsk basin. This community consists of two independent cultures - Alakul and Fedorov, occupying different territories and at the same time a vast joint space, having peculiar features of funeral rituals, ceramics, types of metal tools. Monuments of the early stage of the Alakul culture are sometimes distinguished by archaeologists as a special Petrine culture.

Metal products of the Sintashta culture:
1 - spear tip; 2 - battle ax; 3, 4 - flat adze and socketed chisel; 5,6 - sickle-shaped tools; 7, 8 - arrowheads; 9 - fishing hook; 10-12 - knives; 13 - spectacle pendant

Monuments of the Petrovsky type were first studied near the village. Petrovka on the river. Ishim in the north of Kazakhstan - hence the name of the culture. Its origins are in the Southern Trans-Urals and adjacent regions of Kazakhstan. The settlement of the Petrine tribes to the east was stimulated by the discovery and development of the richest copper ore deposits in the Trans-Urals and Kazakhstan, which from that time would become the base for the producing centers of the Eurasian province.

Petrovsky settlements were sometimes fortified with clay ramparts and ditches (Petrovka 2, Novonikolskoye 1, Kulevchi 3). Most of the settlements had a pronounced metallurgical specialization. Evidence of this is a significant series of copper and bronze tools and production residues (slags, ingots, splashes, crucibles and lyacs, foundry molds, scrap products).

Burials of adults were made under low earth mounds (Petrovka, Verkhnyaya Alabuga). Children's burials were made outside the burial mounds. The mound covered one or more graves (up to 30). The buried were accompanied by a rich inventory - weapons, jewelry, parts of war chariots, as well as sacrificial animals (horses). The dead rested on their left or right side, sometimes in an extended position on their backs. In rare cases, women were buried in large central pits with a rich and varied set of jewelry, including luxurious headdresses on a leather basis.

Pottery of the Petrovsky culture is represented by flat-bottomed pots and jars, sometimes with a rib at the top or profiled. The ornament in the form of triangles and rhombuses, horizontal zigzags and lines is applied in the upper and bottom parts of the vessels, rarely - over the entire surface. Among the inventory are stone maces, axes and arrowheads, bone cheek-pieces and arrowheads. Metal weapons and tools are represented by battle axes, spearheads, flat and socketed adzes, chisels and hooks, sickle-shaped tools, knives, awls and needles. Various decorations. Among them, cruciform pendants and onlays are specifically of the Petrine type. Tools are made mainly of pure copper, weapons and decorations are made of tin bronzes.

With the distribution in the forest and forest-steppe zones of Eurasia - from the Sayano-Altai to Northern Finland, sites of the Seima-Turbino type, the eastern impulse of the formation of the Eurasian province is associated. These monuments include 6 large soil necropolises (Rostovka, Satyga, Turbino, Ust-Vetluga, Seimas and Reshnoye), small and conditional burial grounds, single burials in the area of ​​cemeteries of other cultures (Sopka 2), burial of a shaman set (Galichsky treasure), a sanctuary in Kaninskaya cave on the Pechora, single finds of bronze weapons and casting molds. All major necropolises are confined to large waterways, often to the mouths of large rivers. However, settlements that could be associated with these burial grounds are still unknown.

In most of the graves, human remains are missing or not preserved; perhaps some of these graves are cenotaphs. Ceramics were rarely placed in them. There are burial places of blacksmiths-casters (Rostovka, Sopka 2, Satyga). The grave goods are of a pronounced military character (bronze Celtic axes, spearheads, daggers, chasings, stone arrowheads, leather and bone armor and shields, etc.), which makes it possible to consider the Seima-Turbino burial grounds as retinue necropolises. The very forms of metal weapons and tools, bone plate armor, jade jewelry were previously generally unknown in most cultures of Northern Eurasia. Casting made it possible to decorate axes with relief belts, triangles and rhombuses, and daggers and spearheads - with sculptural figures of animals and people. Daggers are weapons of princely rank - each of them is unique. Their hilts with figurines and heads of animals (horses, argali, bulls, elks, snakes) and humans were cast using lost wax models. On the knife from Rostovka there is a sculptural pommel - a figurine of a horse and a skier holding it by the bridle. In the necropolises, unique jade jewelry was found - rings, bracelets, beads, not typical for other cultures of the Eurasian province.

Inventory of the Turbinsky burial ground:
1,2 - jade and bronze bracelets; 3-5 - arrowheads; 6-8, 13 - insert knives; 9- suspension; 10, 11 - Celts; 12, 14 - axes; 15-18 - spearheads; 19 - adze; 20 - sickle-shaped tool; 21-23 - knives and dagger (3 8, 13, 14 - stone; 16, 18 - billon; 9-12, 15, 17,
19 23 - bronze)

In the Turbinsky burial ground (now within the city of Perm), 10 clearly recorded burials and 101 conditional ones were unearthed. 80-90 single finds were also found, which can be associated with both graves (including cenotaphs) and sacrificial complexes. Groupings of graves are outlined on the area of ​​the necropolis. More than 3,000 items were found here, mostly flint (arrowheads, knives, inserts of composite tools, scrapers, staples, plates) and metal (celts, axes, spearheads, knives and daggers, chasings, bracelets, temporal rings, pendants) products, as well as 36 jade rings.

Inventory of the Rostovkinsky burial ground:
1, 4, 7, 8 - knives; 2, 9 - awls; 3- chisel; 5, 6 - ceramics; 10, 11 - daggers; 12-15 - spearheads; 16, 17 - Celts (1-4, 7, 8, 10-17 - bronze, 9 - bone and bronze)

In the burial ground of Rostovka, located on the southern outskirts of the city of Omsk, 38 ground graves and a number of accumulations of things outside the graves were found. Burials were made in rectangular pits. The funeral rite is varied - cadaverization, cremation on the side with the placement of charred bones in a grave pit, burials without skulls, burial of a skull. Many burials in ancient times were destroyed and desecrated, probably with the aim of causing irreparable damage to the "enemy" - they dug up the grave, broke the skulls, stirred up the upper body, threw the remains out of the pit. At the same time, the inventory, including bronze weapons, gold, jade, lapis lazuli and crystal rings and beads, remained intact. Talc and clay molds were found in two graves. All pottery was found outside the graves.

Galich treasure, found near the village. Turovskoye in the Kostroma region, contained mainly items of ritual and cult purpose - a dagger with a snake-headed handle, curved lancet knives, idol figurines crowned with masks, masks-masks, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures, "noisy" jewelry, etc. It is assumed that this a set of things that accompanied the burial of a shaman, or a cenotaph with cult clothing and the corresponding attributes of shamanic ritual practice.

Kaninskaya cave is located in the upper reaches of the river. Malaya Pechora in the Komi Republic. Sacrifices were made in the depths of the grotto. These are damaged copper and bronze knives and daggers, but mainly flint and bone arrowheads.

Monuments of the Seima-Turbino type are considered as a kind of transcultural phenomenon: they are spread over vast expanses surrounded by many cultures, contacts with which were obvious, but they do not have their own, strictly defined territory. The mobility, dynamism, aggressiveness of the bearers of the Seima-Turbino phenomenon is obvious - from the stage of formation of this culture at the very beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. and its rapid advance to the west and northwest until it disappears.

Two components formed the basis of the Seima-Turbino phenomenon. The first was localized in the steppes, forest-steppes and foothills of the Altai and is associated with the tribes of metallurgists and horse breeders (Eluninskaya, Loginovskaya, Krotovskaya and other cultures). It was in this Altai environment that fundamentally new examples of socketed weapons and images of art (horses, bulls, rams, camels, etc.) were born. The second component, the Sayan, goes back to mobile hunters and fishermen of the southern zone of the East Siberian taiga, known from the monuments of the Glazkovskaya, Shiverskaya and other cultures of the Baikal region and the Angara basin. The carriers of these cultures have achieved perfection in the manufacture of flint, jade and bone tools; they also knew bronze casting, making, in particular, the simplest forms of double-edged bladed blades, scraper knives, and saws. All these achievements, as well as images of the taiga world (snake, elk, bear, etc.), they brought to the culture of the Seima-Turba tribes. The organic merging of the Altai and Sayan components into a single culture probably took place in the forest-steppe foothills between the Ob and the Irtysh.

The transitions-migrations of the Seima-Turba tribes were swift. The first stage passed through Western Siberia. Most likely, already the first clashes with the Petrovsky tribes in the Irtysh forest-steppe forced the Seima-Turbino groups to move to the Urals by more northern routes. Upon reaching the Urals, the Abashevo component is included in the composition of the Seima-Turbino populations. The Eastern European stage is characterized by different directions of movement: up and down along the Kama up to the Volga and the lower reaches of the Oka, north - to the Pechora and Vychegda basins, west along the Volga route - up to White Lake and the northern regions of Finland.

In the steppe and forest-steppe regions of Western Siberia, a whole group of cultures is revealed - Eluninskaya, Loginovskaya and Krotovskaya, to one degree or another involved in the formation of the Seima-Turbino phenomenon. In the burial and settlement sites of these cultures (Elunino, Tsygankova Sopka 2, Chernoozerye 6, etc.), single samples of weapons of the Seima-Turbinsky types (knives, Celts, spearheads) and three molds for casting forked spearheads are known. Pottery from the funeral feasts of the Rostov burial ground is Krotovskaya and, in a small amount, Peter's. The vessels from the Satyga burial ground in the taiga Konda are close to the Krotov ones. The settlement sites of other cultures of the West Siberian forest-steppe and the southern taiga zone (Odinovskaya, Vishnevskaya, Tashkovskaya, etc.) are not associated with the formation of the Seima-Turbino antiquities. The metalworking of these cultures is based on the use of "pure" copper, but the first items made of tin bronzes also appear.

Srubno-Andronovo world and its periphery

In the XVII-XVI centuries. BC. the process of formation of the Eurasian metallurgical province is being completed, the stabilization of production centers and a significant unification of products in the main regions of the EAMP. At this phase, the entire space of the Eurasian steppes and forest-steppes is occupied by monuments of the Srubna, Alakul and Fedorov cultures. The name of the Srubnaya culture goes back to the form of the burial structure (log house), others are associated with Lake Alakul and the village. Fedorovka in the Trans-Urals, where the first mounds of these cultures were excavated. The phase of the active and dynamic existence of the Srubnaya and Alakul communities proceeded, probably, within the second quarter of the 2nd millennium BC. The Ural Mountains and the Ural River are considered to be a conditional border between them.

The Srubno-Alakulsky world is predominantly the world of pastoralists and metallurgists. Archaeological sources do not record any serious deviations from the model of the economic and cultural type that developed in the previous time (pastoral cattle breeding). The number of rich and socially prestigious burials and the number of things in them are significantly reduced. The number of non-inventory burials is increasing. The dead were buried crouched, usually on their left side, and accompanied by one or more vessels, sometimes a copper or bronze knife and an awl. In general, the culture of the Srubna-Alakul world is surprisingly monotonous and standardized. This is manifested in house-building, the burial mound ritual, ceramics and its laconic decoration, metal, bone and stone products, etc. In the shortest possible time, the Srubny and Alakul pastoralists mastered not only the space along large waterways, but also shallow deep forest-steppe and steppe landscapes. Judging by the number of known settlements (of which there are thousands), a real population explosion occurs in this era. Never later, until the colonization of the 18th-19th centuries, was there such a population density in the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe.

The formation of the Srubna-Alakul block of cultures became key point in the stabilization of the producing centers of the Eurasian province. At this phase, in the main regions of the EAMP, a significant unification of metal products occurs, tin and tin-arsenic bronzes are widespread. The vast majority of the metal is concentrated primarily in the steppe and forest-steppe centers. The centers of metalworking of the cultures of the northern forest-steppe and taiga zone are still relatively thin at this time. In the forms of products and the technology of metalworking of the forest-steppe and southern taiga cultures (Pozdnyakovskaya, Prikazanskaya, Cherkaskulskaya, etc.), the influence of the Srubny and Alakul centers is especially noticeable. The production of cultures of the taiga zone and the eastern regions of Western Siberia (Samus and comb-pit ceramics) develops under the influence of the Seima-Turbino impulse.

The area of ​​the Alakul culture was significantly expanded in comparison with the Petrovsky culture to the Irtysh in the east, in the south - to the north of Central Asia. Defensive structures around settlements disappear, the size of dwellings increases. In many settlements, furnaces for smelting copper from ore were found, including complex designs - with air ducts for supplying oxygen to the melting chamber.

Funeral inventory of the Alakul culture:
1-5 - ceramics; 6-8, 13 - overlays; 9- bracelet; 10 - temporal ring; 11- ring; 12 - suspension; 14, 15 - axes; 16-18 - knives; 19 - bone psalium; 20, 21 - plaques (6-10 - bronze and gold foil, 11-18, 20, 21 - bronze)

Funeral inventory of the Fedorov culture:
1 - plan of a stone fence with a grave in the center; 2-4 - ceramics; 5 - clay brazier;
6 - bracelet; 7 - beads; 8 - stone pendant; 9-11 - overlays; 12, 13 - temporal rings; 14 - wooden bucket; 15, 16 - knives; 17 - sickle (6, 7, 9-13, 15-17 - bronze)

Burial structures in cemeteries become more diverse - there are earthen and stone mounds, fences made of stone slabs (Alakul, Kulevchi 6). Inside the pit - a frame or wall cladding with planks with overlapping in the form of wooden rolling, stone boxes covered with slabs. The buried were accompanied by dishes with meat or dairy food. Most often, these are profiled pots, decorated along the neck and body with meanders, triangles, and zigzag ribbons. In male burials, copper and bronze knives and awls are common, sometimes stone axes, maces, hammers, flint, bone and bronze arrowheads are found. Horse harness items are becoming rare. At the same time, cheek-pieces, buckles and other details of the bridle are found mainly in settlements, but not in burial grounds. The burials of women were accompanied by a traditional set of bronze costume decorations (plaques, onlays, bracelets, rings, temple rings, beads, etc.), a headdress (brass head) and even shoes.

In the Alakul centers of metalworking in Central, Northern, Western Kazakhstan and the Trans-Urals, tin bronze was used almost exclusively. Socketed axes, spearheads and arrowheads, stalked and socketed adzes, chisels, punches and chasers, billhooks, double-edged and less often single-edged knives, various decorations (plaques, overlays, bracelets, rings, pendants, threads, etc.) ). Most of the bracelets and rings are covered with thin gold foil, and on many plaques, onlays and piercings, relief lines and patterns are applied with the help of matrices.

The leading form of economic activity was pastoral animal husbandry, primarily cattle breeding. It is possible that semi-nomadic cattle breeding was practiced in areas of dry steppes and semi-deserts. An important role belonged to the horse - along with bulls, it began to be used in this era as a draft animal. Cargo was transported, probably, by two-humped camels, the bone remains of which were found in the layers of the Alakul settlements. Previously, the presence of hoe-growing floodplain agriculture was assumed, but its direct evidence - the remains of cereal grains - is absent in archaeological sites. The metallurgical production of the Alakul hearths was the most powerful in the Eurasian province in terms of the availability of raw materials. Alakul miners developed copper and polymetallic deposits of Mugodzhar, Northern and Central Kazakhstan, Rudny Altai. Tin mining in the Kalba and Narym ranges, which at that time became the main source of bronze ligature for the entire Eurasian province, acquires special significance. Gold deposits were also developed in Northern Kazakhstan and Altai.

The end of the Alakul culture (XV/XIV centuries BC) is associated with the formation of sites of the Alekseevsky-Sargarin type, studied in the Trans-Urals, Kazakhstan, Semirechye and Altai.

The monuments of the Fedorov culture do not form a continuous array: they have been explored by several local groups in the Trans-Urals, Kazakhstan, in the south of Western Siberia, in the Minusinsk Basin, and in the mountains of Central Asia. The origin and chronology of these monuments is a matter of debate. The most substantiated hypothesis is about the central and eastern Kazakhstan origins of the Fedorov culture. The antiquities of its early stage existed synchronously with the Alakul ones, and the late Fedorovka sites probably coexist for some time with the Alekseevsky-Sargarin ones.

The basic principle of settlement planning is linear. The houses are located in 1-2 rows along the river bank. These are light frame dwellings or large multi-chamber semi-dugouts with powerful walls. Industrial metallurgical facilities on the territory of settlements are separated from residential ones (Atasu). Burial grounds are low mounds surrounded by round or rectangular stone enclosures (Fedorovsky, Putilovskaya Zaimka); soil necropolises are also known. There are long-term monuments (30-120 or more structures) and small burial grounds (6-25 burial mounds). The number of graves in the mound is small - one or several. The pits are located in the center of the mound, in a circle or in a row. The burial chambers were built of stone, wood or clay, which gave the grave pits the appearance of a crypt-dwelling. Stone boxes and cysts are especially characteristic of this culture. Among the Fedorovites, a stable rite of burning and placing the ashes in the grave is recorded, but the rite of burial is also common. There are graves with grave goods, but without the remains of the deceased, as well as symbolic burials without grave goods and remains.

Pottery is represented by two groups of vessels: ceremonial-ritual and household. The first - profiled pots with an ornament in the form of oblique triangles, rhombuses, meanders, forming complex carpet patterns - is concentrated mainly in burials, the second, pots and jars with simpler patterns - in the layers of settlements. Tin bronze was used to make socketed axes, hooks and arrowheads, double-edged and less often single-edged knives and daggers, billhook sickles, various ornaments, often overlaid with gold foil. Especially typical for Fedorov metalworking are bracelets with spiral “horned” ends, rings with a bell, stamped pattern onlays, and knife-shaped pendants.

The area of ​​the Srubnaya cultural and historical community is the steppes, forest-steppes and semi-deserts of Eastern Europe, the Southern Trans-Urals and Western Kazakhstan. The origin of the Srubny antiquities remains one of the most difficult problems of Bronze Age archeology. Previously, it was assumed that the original core of the Srubna culture developed on the basis of the Late Pit culture in the Trans-Volga region. From here, it allegedly began its spread to the west to the Dnieper and to the east to the Urals. It is currently assumed that the Srubnaya culture of the Dnieper-Donetsk interfluve was formed on the basis of the local Babinsky culture with the participation of the population of the Don Abashevskaya culture. In the Don-Volga-Ural interfluve, the origins of early log antiquities are associated with previous cultures - late Catacomb, late Yamnaya, Abashevskaya and Sintashta.

Within the framework of the log community, several local variants and even cultures stand out. There are three stages of its development. Early Srubny corresponds to the beginning of the formation of these antiquities (XVII/XVI centuries BC). At this stage, the features of the Middle Bronze Age are clearly manifested. The second and third stages (XVI/XV-XV/XIV centuries BC) - the period of addition, stable development, and then transformation of the log community. A characteristic feature of these stages is active interaction with the eastern Andronovo - Alakul and Fedorov - the world, and then with the "andronoid" cultures - Cherkaskul, Suskan, etc.

Monuments of the Srubnaya community are represented by settlements, mounds and ground burials, ore workings, hoards of copper ingots and tools, as well as random finds. Settlements are usually located on low river terraces. Dwellings - ground, semi-dugouts and dugouts, with a gable or hipped roof - were built using a frame-pillar structure. The walls are made of turf, logs, rarely flagstone. In large buildings, the residential part is most often separated from the utility part. Inside the dwellings there were one or more hearths, underground pits, and sometimes a well.

Srubnaya cultural and historical community:
1 - reconstruction of the dwelling; 2-5, 14 - ceramics; 6, 9, 11, 13 - pendants; 7 - mace model; 8, 12 - pads; 10- clip; 15- bracelet; 16- ring; 17, 19 - spearheads; 18 - awl; 20-24 - knives and daggers; 25 - marble mace; 26 - chisel; 27 - sickle billhook; 28 - ax; 29, 30 - clay molds for casting an ax and sickle billhooks (6, 7 - bone; 8-13, 15-24,
26-28 - copper and bronze)

Burial mounds (Berezhnovka, Yagodnoe, Khryashchevka) are located on terraces or hills along the banks of rivers, less often - on watersheds. They do not include big number embankments - from 2 to 10-15; single mounds and huge necropolises are rare. Grave structures - rectangular in shape - are represented by pits, wooden log cabins and stone boxes. They were often covered with log rolling or chopping blocks. The buried lay crouched, usually on their left side in the adoration position. In the ground burial grounds (Smelovsky, Alekseevsky, Syezzhinsky), the burials were arranged in rows. Parts of the carcasses of domestic animals were placed in the grave as funeral food, one or several vessels, sometimes together with a copper or bronze knife, awl, and jewelry. In the eastern districts of the community, female burials are known with rich headdresses made by Alakul craftsmen from sheet bronze, gold and silver foil (Puzanovsky, Novo-Yabalaklinsky 1).

Ceramics of settlements and cemeteries is represented by jar, pot-shaped and sharp-ribbed vessels. It is decorated with horizontal and oblique lines, flutes, zigzag, herringbone, geometric shapes. Wooden utensils, sometimes with bronze fittings, are found in the burials. A variety of tools and weapons made of stone are represented by drilled axes and maces, arrowheads, scrapers, hammers and hammers, anvils, ore grinders, abrasives, etc.; jewelry is also known - beads, pendants. Articles made of bone are no less diverse: handles of metal knives and awls, polishes and spatulas, piercers, needles and knitting needles, scoops and shovels, arrowheads, cheek-pieces, rings, buttons, threads, playing (fortune-telling) bones, etc.

The mining and metallurgical production of the Srubnaya community was based on the cuprous sandstones of the Urals and the Donetsk Ridge in the east of Ukraine. The main producing centers - Kargaly (dominant) and Donetsk - are located on the periphery of the community. Thin ore occurrences of the Middle Volga region (Mikhailo-Ovsyanka and others) were also exploited. The distribution of copper from these centers was mainly latitudinal in nature, within the Eastern European steppe and forest-steppe. A significant part of the metal, especially jewelry, came from the workshops of the Alakul community of Kazakhstan. Copper of the Kargaly mining and metallurgical center was used only in the Volga-Ural region, without crossing the eastern border of the Srubny area. Despite the large imports of raw materials and ornaments from the East (tin and antimony-arsenic bronzes), the strategically important sphere of manufacturing tools and weapons remained in the hands of log smiths and casters, who used mainly "pure" Kargaly and Donetsk copper.

The scale of the production activity of the Kargaly Center, the largest mining, metallurgical and metalworking complex in Northern Eurasia, is striking. More than 70 settlements of miners and metallurgists of the log community, many thousands of traces of surface and underground workings have been discovered here. For the extraction and primary processing of ore, a huge amount of copper, bone and stone tools was required.

Kargaly Mining and Metallurgical Center:
1 - site of the Gorny settlement (in the center) and traces of ancient and old mining operations, aerial photograph (black square - the place of concentration of archaeological excavations); 2 - a labyrinth of fixed underground workings (at a depth of 10-15 m) at the Myasnikovsky site

The basic production of metal products was carried out in several specialized centers - Gorny 1 (Urals), Lime Ov¬rag (Middle Volga), Mosolovka (Podonye), Usovo Lake (Eastern Ukraine), etc. But if the metalworking of Gorny was aimed at manufacturing mining tools (picks, picks, picks, wedges) used here, on Kargaly, the products of Mosolovka and other centers (sickles, billhooks, axes, spearheads, adzes and chisels) were intended primarily for external commodity exchange.

The main forms of tools and weapons in the centers of metalworking of the Srubna community go back to the stereotypes of the previous Circumpontic oovindia - these are axes, flat and grooved adzes and chisels, shank knives and daggers, etc. Axes and sickle-hooks become more massive. New models of tools appear - Celts-adzes with an open sleeve. The technology of thin-walled casting of socketed tips of spears, adzes and chisels is being introduced, but the casting of blanks and subsequent forging still remain the most important methods for shaping tools. Log smiths master the secrets of obtaining flash iron, from which a few more knives and awls are forged. Despite the abundance and variety of jewelry (bracelets, rings, pendants, linings, beads, etc.) and the use of precious metals - gold and silver in their manufacture, the jewelry business of the Srubny community is noticeably inferior in scale and quality to the eastern one - Alakul and Fedorov.

Gorny - a settlement of miners and metallurgists of the log community:
1 - anvil; 2, 3 - hammers; 4 - sledgehammer; 5, 9 - arrowheads; 6 - overlay; 7 - waste smelting and smelting of copper; 8, 12 - molds for casting a pick-axe and sickles-hooks; 10 - bone playing (fortune-telling) dice; 11 - pickaxe (1-4, 8, 12-stone; 5, 6, 9, 11 - copper and bronze)

Previously, it was traditionally believed that a sedentary pastoral-agricultural type of economy is characteristic of the Srubnaya community. However, single grains of cultivated cereals (mainly millet) were found only in the Donetsk-Dnieper interfluve, in the border zone of the Srubnaya and Sabatinovskaya cultures. Perhaps this indicates the presence of floodplain agriculture here. For the main area of ​​the Srubnaya community, the leading form of economic activity was home and pasture cattle breeding, and in the regions of the Ciscaucasian and Caspian steppes and semi-deserts, perhaps, its semi-nomadic form was practiced. Cattle breeding was the basis of life support, a smaller role belonged to sheep, goats and horses.

The similarity of the features of the funeral rite, ceramics, bronze, iron and bone tools and weapons of the log community and cultures of the Pre-Scythian and Scythian times in the south of Eastern Europe has long been noticed. Many researchers believe that the archaeological cultures associated with historically known peoples - the Cimmerians and Scythians, are a continuation of the Srubnaya.

The population of the Srubnaya and Alakul communities had a noticeable impact on the culture and economy of the peoples of the forest zone of Eastern Europe and the northern forest-steppe of Western Siberia. However, the influence of the Srubno-Alakul world does not extend to the deep regions of the Eurasian taiga. The population of the north of Eastern Europe is characterized by a rather primitive level of metalworking. An example of this is the culture of asbestos ceramics in Karelia. The population of this region does not perceive new technologies and uses all the same methods of forging and casting native copper, which took root here in the Eneolithic era. In the north of Eastern Europe, single samples of Celtic axes (Vis 2) are known, which can be associated with the reproduction of the Seima-Turbino weapons. They have a characteristic detail - "false" ears.

Only in the borderlands of the forest-steppe and forests, along the Oka, the middle reaches of the Volga and the lower reaches of the Kama, is the transformation of aboriginal cultures taking place. These cultures, first of all the late Krikanskaya and early Prikazanskaya (Pozdnyakovo, Podbornoye, Zaimishche 3), adopted a new socio-economic structure and stereotypes of the EAMP associated with Abashevskaya and log metalworking. This was especially clearly manifested in the forms of socketed spearheads, double-edged shank knives, flat adzes, forged chisels with an open bushing, cleaver sickles, and various types of jewelry. The influence of the southern forest-steppe cultures was also reflected in the collection of ceramics and the funeral rite of the Oka and Volga-Kama populations.

Cultures of the northern periphery of the Srubno-Andronovo world (1-16 - Pozdnyakovskaya; 17-19 - Cherkaskulskaya; 20-29 - Chernoozersko-Tomsky version):
1-3, 17, 18, 20-22 - ceramics; 4 - scraper; 5-7 - arrowheads and darts; 8 - spear tip; 9-11, 28, 29 - knives and daggers; 12, 23 - temporal rings; 13- overlay; 14, 15, 27 - bracelets; 16 - threads; 19 - mold for casting chisels and knives; 24, 25 - plaques; 26 - ring (4-7 - flint; 12 - bronze and gold foil; 19 - talc; 8-11, 13-16, 23-29 - bronze)

Similar processes took place in the northern forest-steppe and in the southern taiga zone of Western Siberia. Here, especially in the Tobol-Irtysh interfluve, the penetration of the Alakul and Fedorov collectives to the north is observed. Their interaction with the aboriginal population led to the formation of peculiar antiquities of the Koptyakov and Cherkaskul cultures (Koptyaki 5, Berezki 5g, Lipovaya Kurya, Palatki 1), called "andronoid" in the literature. They came here to replace the monuments of Tashkov culture.

In the taiga zone of Western Siberia, cultures of comb-pit ceramics (Saigatino-6, Volvoncha 1, Pashkin Bor 1) are localized, which differ only in the details of the decoration of ceramics. The metalworking of this zone is represented mainly by the casting molds of Celtic axes. The reconstructed tools in form and ornament (a belt of horizontal relief lines) resemble, on the one hand, the Celts of the Turbinsky burial ground, and, on the other hand, later samples of the Ananya and Kulai communities of the Early Iron Age.

In the Ob-Irtysh interfluve, the penetration of the Alakul and Fedorov groups into the northern regions of the forest-steppe was not so noticeable. In these areas, the sustainable development of the Krotovo culture continued. Monuments of its second stage are represented mainly by settlements (Inberen 10, Preobrazhenka 3, Kargat 6). In ceramics, jar forms still dominate, but the ornamental tradition (receding prickles) inherent in the early stage of culture is being eliminated. The number of vessels with comb decor and ridges under the neck increased. Stone and bone processing remains at a high level. Bronze tools and weapons of the Seima-Turbino types disappeared, but the products and casting molds of the Andronovo types appeared (double-edged cutting knives, spearheads with a “cuff” at the mouth of the bushing, decorations). The diversified economy of the Krotov tribes combined producing (cattle breeding, metalworking) and appropriating industries (hunting, fishing, gathering).

The traditions of the Seima-Turbino metalworking took root in this era only in the taiga zone of Western and Eastern Siberia, in the Kuznetsk-Salair mountain system and in a narrow strip of ribbon forests of the Upper Ob region. The forms of Celtic axes and spearheads, called “Samus-Kizhirovsky”, differ from the Seima-Turbinsky ones in essential details (“false” ears, lush “carpet” ornament, “pseudo-fork”). They are characteristic of the Samus culture of the Upper and Middle Ob region, the Kuznetsk basin (Samus-4, Krokhalevka 1, Tanai-4). To the east, in the regions of Sayano-Altai, the Okunev and Karakol cultures of the Sayan-Altai develop (Okunev ulus, Chernovaya 8, Ozernoye, Karakol). These Siberian cultures are characterized by peculiar and similar anthropo- and zoomorphic plots on ceramics, steles and slabs of burial chambers.

Inventory of the Krotovskaya (1-8), Samusskaya (9-11) and Okunevskaya (12-22) cultures: 1-4, 15-18 - ceramics; 5-8, 13, 14 - knives and daggers; 9 - casting mold for casting a celt; 10.11 -
Celts; 12-ring 19- necklaces; 20, 21 - plates with images of women's faces;
22 buckle (5-8, 10-14 - bronze; 19, 22 - stone; 20, 21 - bone)

Commonality of KVK and "andronoid" cultures

At the third stage of the development of the Eurasian province, the main cultural and historical processes are characterized by two fundamental phenomena. The steppe spaces became an arena for the consolidation of the population of the Srubna-Andronovo world, which ultimately led to the formation of a community of cultures with roller ceramics (RWC). This restructuring of the cultures of the steppe belt was probably caused by the onset of aridization of the climate, the drying up of soils, and the deterioration of pasture lands. On the contrary, in the forest-steppe and southern taiga latitudes, a mosaic of cultures is observed, which smoothly turns into a monotonous picture of the world of forest hunters and fishermen with comb-pit ceramics inherent in these societies in the east and textile - in the west. During this period, the main centers of metalworking of the EAMP were relocated to the forest and forest-steppe zones. The mining and metallurgical centers of Sayano-Altai, Kazakhstan and the Urals send the bulk of the metal produced to these regions. In the production technology and in the morphology of metal products, there are significant changes. Artificial alloys are widely used. Along with the production of double-edged knives and daggers, socketed axes, flat and grooved adzes and chisels, dating back to the early Circumpontic stereotypes, mass production of socketed Celtic axes, spearheads and arrowheads, adzes, and single-edged knives begins in the steppe and forest-steppe. Thin-walled casting technology is becoming a leader in metalworking. New models of tools and weapons appear, such as massive sickle billhooks and slotted spearheads.

The commonality of the KVK in the Asian and European steppes is characterized at an early stage by a noticeable unity of material culture. It got its name from a characteristic detail of the decor of the vessels - molded-on rollers under the rim, along the throat or shoulders, sometimes with hanging ends in the form of a "moustache". Roller pottery cultures covered the territory from the Altai in the east to the Lower Danube and the Eastern Carpathians in the west. It distinguishes two main zones - western (Thracian) and eastern. The border between them is in the interfluve of the Seversky Donets and the Dnieper.

The eastern common zone stretched from the Don-Donetsk interfluve in the west to the Upper Ob in the east and the northern semi-deserts of Central Asia in the south. It includes monuments of the Ivanovo type of the Eastern European steppe (sometimes they are also called Khvalyn or Late Srub) and Alekseevsky, Sargarinsky and Dandybai-Begazinsky - Asian. However, behind the different names of the monuments of the Asian steppes, in fact, lie antiquities that are uniform in their material culture. Common features in the cultures of the KVK community are manifested, in addition to ceramic traditions, in the rejection of the burial rite under the kurgan, in the methods of house-building, the spread of agriculture, the structure of the cattle breeding economy, in which the role of sheep and horses is increasing. The morphological composition of the metal inventory turned out to be very similar.

Pictorial monuments of Okunev culture:
1 - signs-symbols on stone steles; 2 - anthropomorphic figures with bird heads next to the mask (on a slab from the Tas-Khaza burial ground); 3.5 - masks on a vessel and a stone slab; 4, 6-10 -
steles with multi-figured images

Treasures of copper and bronze objects become massive, especially in the western zone. In the eastern zone, there are significantly fewer of them (Sosnovo-Mazinsky, Derbedenevsky, Karmanovsky, Tereshkovsky, Shamshinsky, etc.). The composition of the treasures included mainly sickles and Celtic axes, which are not found in burials. In the hoard from Sosnovaya Maza near the city of Khvalynsk on the Volga, massive mowing sickles and daggers have not been removed after casting, casting seams and burrs. Two copper ingots weighing 7-8 kg each were used to make the tools of this treasure.

During this period, in the forest-steppe and southern taiga regions of the Volga-Urals, the process of "andronization" of local cultures intensified, associated with the spread of Fedorov and Cherkaskul antiquities. An example of this are the monuments of the Suskan and Prikazan types (Suskan 1, Lugovsoe 1, Kartashikha). Separate areas of the forest-steppe, in particular, the upper reaches of the Don, remain in the sphere of the emerging KVK community (Melgunovo 3). In the Volga-Oka interfluve, the monuments of the Pozdnyakovo culture are replaced by antiquities of the culture of early "textile" ceramics (Tyukov Gorodok, Fefelov Bor 1, Dikarikha). An exodus of a significant part of the population of the Pozdnyakovo culture to the southwestern regions and its contribution to the formation of sites of the Bondarikhinsky culture of Eastern Ukraine is assumed.

Inventory of the community of cultures with "roller" ceramics (eastern zone):
1, 2, 6, 7 - ceramics; 3,4 - bone cheek-pieces; 5 - bracelet; 8, 10, 11 - overlays; 9 - temporal ring; 12, 20 - mirrors; 13- ax; 14, 15 - sickles-hooks; 16- spear tip; 17-19 - arrowheads; 21-23 - chisels and adzes; 24-26 - knives and daggers (5, 9, 10, 12-26 - copper
and bronze; 8, 11- bone)

In the West Siberian forest-steppe, for some time, groups of the late Krotovskaya and Fedorovskaya cultures coexisted. The most striking monuments of that era are the Chernoozerskoye settlement, burial mounds and soil burials Chernoozerye 1, Sopka 2, Elovka 1-2. There is a noticeable variety of variants of the funeral rite: the position of the dead stretched out on the back and crouched on the side, sometimes with the knees bent and raised up or in a sitting position, tiered burials are also noted. Among the inventory are stone and bone arrowheads, piercers and needles, bronze double-edged and single-edged knives and daggers, awls and needles, various jewelry (bracelets, pendants, rings, plaques, linings, etc.). Pottery of settlements and burial grounds is represented mainly by jars and pot-shaped forms. In the decor, there is a combination of two ornamental traditions - comb-pit (Krotovskaya) and geometric (Andronovo) on funerary dishes, rollers are preserved as a relic (Sopka 2).

During this period, part of the aboriginal population is pushed to the north. "Andronoid" cultures of the pre-taiga and taiga zones (Cherkaskul, Yelovskaya, Suzgunskaya, etc.) differ from forest-steppe antiquities by a more noticeable inclusion of elements of forest cultures in the ornamental decoration. Some features of the Andronovo (Fedorov) ornamentation are also perceived by the cultures of the range of comb-pit ceramics; but this world - from the Pechora basin in the north-east of Europe to the Tomsk-Chulym Ob region in Siberia - with its complex appropriating economy, maintains the stability of internal development, which is also manifested in the nature of taiga metalworking (Samu-Kizhirovsky Celtic axes with an ornament of horizontal relief lines ).

At the end of the Bronze Age (XII/XI-X/IX centuries BC), the processes of destruction and disintegration of the Eurasian province were intensifying, accompanied by a re-formulation of the ethno-cultural map of most regions of Northern Eurasia.

The commonality of the KVK of the Asian and European steppes at a late stage of its development is losing its former unity of material culture. Monuments of the Trushnikov, Dongal and Begazin types in Kazakhstan and in the south of Western Siberia, the Nur type in the Volga-Urals and the Central Asian interfluve, actually demonstrate the disintegration of this community. The steppes east of the Seversky Donets are emptying. In the Asian steppes, the population density also noticeably decreases, but it was at this time that settlements appeared in Central Kazakhstan, claiming the status of cities. For example, the area of ​​the Kent settlement reaches 30 hectares, Buguly and Myrzhik - 14 and 3 hectares, respectively. There is an outflow of steppe collectives to the northern forest-steppe, the foothills of the Altai and Tien Shan, and to the early agricultural oases of Central Asia.

The ethnocultural map of the forest-steppe and southern taiga spaces changes radically at the end of the Bronze Age. Integration processes are gaining momentum. The mosaic of cultures, characteristic of the previous phase of the development of the EAMP, is becoming a thing of the past: huge cultural and historical communities are being formed here. In the Volga-Oka basin and the forested Volga region, monuments of common cultures with "textile" ceramics are spreading. In the Volga-Kamie, a Predan'in (Maklasheev) community is being formed. In the Cis-Urals and Trans-Urals, the monuments of the Mezhovskaya and Bargekovo cultures are replacing the "andronoid" ones.

The West Siberian forest-steppe and the southern taiga regions of the Ob region become a zone of distribution of the Kornazhkin and Irmen cultures.

In these vast expanses, a kind of “renaissance” of aboriginal cultures is taking place, expressed in a noticeable increase in population, radical processing, and even the rejection of some of the stereotypes of the cultures of the Srubno-Andronovo world introduced in previous eras. This is especially evident in the widespread distribution of round-bottomed ceramics, its ornamental decoration, the gradual abandonment of the burial mound ritual, and the ethnographic originality of women's jewelry. The settlement monuments of these cultures are mainly represented by settlements on the high and low banks of rivers and lakes. Some of them are fortified with ramparts and ditches. Burial grounds - ground or mounds with low mounds. Burials - elongated or crouched - were made in shallow pits or at the level of the buried soil. The graves are most often arranged in rows or groups.

The world of taiga Eurasian cultures continues to develop in line with established traditions, although it is experiencing certain third-party influences. During this period, the local specificity of the regions becomes more expressive.

The Lebyazh culture of the Northern Cis-Urals, the Atlym, Late Suzgun, Lozvin, Barsov, and Elovo cultures of the Trans-Urals and Western Siberia demonstrate the transformation of the once indivisible cultural space, the indicator of the unity of which was comb-pit ceramics. At the end of the Bronze Age, this ornamental tradition in various regions acquires a specific color due to the introduction of figuratively stamped and serpentine (finely jet) ornaments into the canonical decor schemes. Decor features are actually the only criterion for distinguishing archaeological cultures in the taiga zone. No ordinary soil burials have been found here, and sanctuaries are widespread.

The system of producing centers of the EAMP in the final of the Late Bronze Age inherits the structure of the previous period. The mining and metallurgical centers of Rudny Altai and Kazakhstan continue to send the bulk of copper and bronze to the centers of metalworking of forest-steppe and forest crops. The production of copper in the Ural mining and metallurgical region is fading, and at the same time, the import of Sayan arsenic copper and finished products is increasing, especially in the Irmen centers of the Ob-Yenisei interfluve. In the west, in the Dnieper-Donets borderland of the Eurasian and European (Carpathian) metallurgical provinces, the influx of Carpathian tin bronzes is increasing, but in the more eastern centers - Bondarikhinsky and Maklasheevsky - the influx of these bronzes is no longer noticeable.

More important changes are related to the localization of centers of metalworking in Eastern Europe. Steppe and forest-steppe centers almost completely stop their activity. In fact, the Volga-Urals is becoming a "wild field". Only in the western regions of the forest-steppe, a small amount of production is carried out by the foundry workers of the Bondarikhinsky culture. At the end of the Late Bronze Age, the main centers of metalworking - the Predananyinsky and textile ceramics cultures - were relocated
in the southern regions of the forest belt. In the Asian zone of the Eurasian province, the southern taiga centers, on the contrary, give way to the dominant role of the forest-steppe, Irmen ones.

At the end of the Bronze Age, the production of the same categories of tools, weapons and ornaments as in the previous period is preserved. The set of metal inventory itself does not change drastically (sleeve-shaped Celts, spear and arrowheads, adzes, knives with one and two blades, various decorations). Only their forms are modified, determining the specifics of certain centers. The evolution of these forms will continue at the beginning of the Early Iron Age, but only in the taiga producing centers of the Ananyin, Itkul, Protokulai and other cultures.

THE LATE BRONZE AGE WITHIN THE CENTRAL ASIAN PROVINCE

The Central Asian metallurgical province covered the territory of the Sayano-Altai, Transbaikalia, Mongolia, Northwest and Northeast China. Here, in the post-Andronovo era, a community of cultures of the Karasuk circle was formed (Karasuk, Lugava and tiled graves, early stage), whose monuments date back to the 15th/14th-9th/VTII centuries. BC. In the northern zone of the province, the Karasuk metallurgical hearth was the most powerful. Its activity was carried out on the basis of ore sources of the Sayano-Altai mining and metallurgical region. Casters of the Karasuk and Lugava cultures used mainly copper-arsenic alloys, although earlier, in the Okunev and Andronovo (Fedorov) cultures, tin and tin-arsenic bronzes were common in the Minusinsk and Kuznetsk basins. The Andronovo heritage in the metalworking of the Karasuk circle cultures is hardly noticeable, in contrast to the Seima-Turbinsky heritage, which was especially pronounced in the forms and decor of surprisingly diverse single-edged curved knives and daggers.

Among the cultures of the Central Asian province, the Karasuk culture is the most well studied. The main array of monuments is concentrated in the Minusinsk depression. More than 1,600 stone burial enclosures (Karasuk-4, Malye Kopeny 3), several settlements (Kamenny Log 1, Torgozhak) and a copper smelter (Temir) have been excavated here. Dwellings - given the cold winters - were small or spacious deep dugouts and semi-dugouts, with several hearths for cooking and heating. The walls were built from logs, clay and stone slabs. The roof was insulated with earth taken out of the pit.

The fences around the graves are square, rarely round, inside there are 1-2 burials in stone boxes (made of thin slabs) or cists deepened to a meter. Burials in an extended position on the back or left side predominate. 1-2 vessels were placed at the head, at the feet on a wooden tray - a part of the carcass of a ram, a cow, rarely a horse. The end of the blade of a bronze knife was placed over the bones of animals, less often - a whole knife. Other tools and weapons were not placed in the graves, with the exception of awls and needles, but men, and especially women, were buried with a large number of various decorations. Among them are bronze plaques, earrings, rings, pendants, chains, threads, combs, stone and paste beads, cowrie shells.

Burial and settlement complexes of the Karasuk culture:
1 - plans of burial structures; 2, 4 - pebbles with images; 3 - ceramics; 5 - stone pestle; 6 - wooden comb; 7, 8 - hoes; 9 - Celt; 10, 11 - knives; 12, 19 - overlays; 13, 21 - pendants; 14, 15 - bracelets; 16, 20 - rings; 17, 18 - plaques (7, 8 - horn; 9 - bronze
and tree; 10-21 - bronze)

Pottery of settlements and burial grounds is round-bottomed, with a spherical body, sometimes with a flattened bottom, most often polished to a shine. Some of the vessels are without ornament or only with a belt of pits along the neck, others are richly decorated with rhombuses, triangles, scallops, impressions with drawn lines; sometimes the patterns are inlaid with white paste.

The main branch of the economy is pastoral cattle breeding. It is assumed that the Karasuk people switched to a mobile system of cattle grazing. However, the limited size of the Minusinsk Basin and the composition of the herd - with a noticeable predominance of cattle - testify to the possible movement with them only over short distances. Horse breeding, sheep breeding, hunting for roe deer and red deer were an important source of meat nutrition, but dairy products were the basis of the diet. There is no direct evidence of agriculture for the Karasuk epoch, which was so obvious in the subsequent Tagar epoch (see section III).

LATE BRONZE AGE OF EASTERN SIBERIA
AND FAR EAST

Rare settlements with traces of bronze casting production are known on the vast territory of Eastern Siberia. There are also few metal tools and decorations in burial grounds. The appearance of copper and bronze contributed to the improvement of hunting and fishing tools, but did not fundamentally change the Neolithic appearance of the cultures of this region (Glazkovskaya, Shiverskaya, Ymyyakhtakhskaya, Ust-Belskaya, etc.). Separate finds of Seima-Turbino and Samus-Kizhirovsky celts, daggers of the Karasuk type, characteristic of the Eurasian and Central Asian provinces, are known here, however, East Siberian cultures were not directly included in the systems of these provinces.

In the Baikal region, in the Angara basin and the upper reaches of the Lena, and in southern Transbaikalia, monuments of the Glazkovo culture have been discovered, which are mainly represented by burials, short-term sites and materials in the layers of foreign cultural settlements (Ulan-Khoda on Baikal).

Most of the graves were covered with stone lining, sometimes in the form of a boat, some are marked on the surface with stone ring lining. Burials were made in a crouched, stretched or sitting position. Them salient feature- orientation along the river, often head upstream. Male burials are usually accompanied by stone, bone, less often copper tools for fishing and hunting (harpoons, points, fish hooks, knives, chisels and adzes, spear and arrowheads, etc.) hunting animals (scrapers, needles, needle cases, etc.), as well as a large number of jewelry. Among them, jade, mother-of-pearl and pyrophyllite disks, rings and beads, fangs and incisors of animals, which were sewn onto richly decorated fur breastplates and headdresses, are especially noteworthy. Funeral and settlement ceramics, round-bottomed and sharp-bottomed, are usually decorated over the entire surface with impressions of a spatula-stamp, pits-pearls, and carved lines. At the end of the culture, vessels with flattened bottoms appeared. Bone products were also richly decorated.

Cultures of the Bronze Age of Eastern Siberia (1-21 - Glazkovskaya;
22-29 - ymyyakhtakh):
1 - reconstruction of the appearance of a hunter (based on materials from burial 1 of the Lenkovka burial ground); 2 - prison; 3 - harpoon; 4 - spear tip (with a blade made of thin flint liners); 5 - puncture; 6-8 - ceramics; 9- ax; 10, 12, 13, 25-27 - arrowheads; 11, 15, 23, 24 - knives; 14, 16 - fishing hooks; 17, 18, 22 - anthropomorphic figurines; 19, 28 - spatulas; 20 - spoon; 21 - pickaxe; 29 - needle case (9-13, 23-25 ​​- stone; 14 - bone and stone; 15 - copper and bone; 16 - copper; 21 - wood and horn; 2-5, 17-20, 22, 26-29- bone)

The tribes of the Glazkovskaya, Ymyyakhtakhskaya, Ust-Belskaya and other cultures are mobile and semi-sedentary groups of hunters and fishermen of the mountain-forest taiga of Eastern Siberia and the northern regions of the Far East. The economic and cultural type formed in their midst has been preserved here until the historically known Tungus-speaking peoples and the Yukaghirs. Metal things in these cultures are rare (spearheads, single-edged knives, arrowheads, plaques, etc.), but the indisputable sign of acquaintance with them is stone tools and weapons that imitate bronze samples, as well as casting molds. In the settlements, recessed and ground dwellings of a frame structure with several hearths inside were built. The walls of some buildings are made of stone. The main archaeological material is represented by ceramics - these are pots, jars, bowls, pots, amphoras, sometimes polished and painted. Tools and weapons are usually made of slate: axes, adzes, knives, spear and arrowheads. The cultures of Primorye and the Amur region are characterized by a diversified economy (hoe farming, cattle breeding, fishing, hunting and gathering). Farming is evidenced by direct evidence - the remains of millet in the layers of settlements. The formation of metalworking took place under the influence of the cultures of the southern zone of the Central Asian province (Manchuria, Ordos, Mongolia, Sayano-Altai).

Late Bronze Age cultures of the Amur Region and Primorye (1-6, 10 - Sinegai; 7-9, 11, 12 - Margaritovskaya; 13-22 - Lidovskaya):
1, 2, 18 - stone imitations of bronze spearheads; 3-5, 7, 8, 15, 17 - ceramics; 9, 14 - stone axes; 10- clay disc; 11 - whorl; 12, 13 - arrowheads; 16 - clay figurine; 19-21 - knives; 22 - hoe (12, 13, 19-21, 22 - stone)

LATE BRONZE AGE WITHIN THE CAUCASIAN METALLURGICAL PROVINCE

Among the metallurgical provinces of the Late Bronze Age, the most noticeable changes are observed in the Caucasus, perhaps even the rejection of the stereotypes of the production of the previous province - Circumpontian. In place of the former unity of the Caucasus and the steppe came, in fact, their complete isolation. Rare items of Caucasian types will appear in the steppe only at the very end of the Bronze Age. The set of tools, weapons and decorations has changed dramatically, having little in common with the samples of the Middle Bronze Age. The scale of production and the number of metal products increased many times over. This stimulated the development of mines located in the highlands (Bashkapsara). Not only oxidized, but also sulfide ores are actively developed. Metalworking was based on the use of multicomponent alloys. At the same time, the production of gold and silver items, which were so characteristic of the previous era, practically ceased. The first iron products appear.

Among the bronze items, axes of the Koban and Colchis types, daggers, spear and arrowheads, maces, and various ornaments attract attention. Many of them are cast according to a lost (wax) model, have an exquisite decor, engraving, inlay with a new, then still rare material - iron. The vast majority of metal is made only for the "world of the dead." Tons of copper and bronze are buried in cemeteries and sanctuaries - a materialized huge work of miners, metallurgists and blacksmiths of Koban, Colchis and other cultures.

The area of ​​the Koban culture is on both sides of the Main Caucasian ridge, i.e. in the center of this mountainous country. This culture was formed in the late Bronze Age (XIII/XII-IV centuries BC) and, like the Galyptat and "textile" culture in the west and north of Europe, smoothly passed into the Iron Age stage and existed throughout the entire Scythian era.

Bronze tools and weapons of the cultures of the Late Bronze Age of the Caucasus:
1-3, 5-8 - axes and axes; 4 - dagger; 9, 10 - swords; 11 - sickle; 12 - scabbard; 13 - mace

The ethnonym of its creators is unknown (the name of the culture is given by the name of the modern village of Upper Koban in North Ossetia, where the first important finds were made), but it is clear that their ancestors inhabited this territory since the Bronze Age, when the Caucasian anthropological type of the Caucasoid race was formed. The origins of the Koban culture are among the cultures of the foothill and mountainous regions of the Caucasus of the Middle Bronze Age.

The Koban tribes practiced cattle breeding (transhumance with a predominance of sheep - in the mountains, home-based with the dominance of cattle and pigs - in the foothills) in combination with agriculture (they grew hard and soft wheat, barley, rye, and millet). Non-ferrous and ferrous metallurgy and metalworking, including art, have reached a high level.

The Koban craftsmen not only adopted, first from the Cimmerians and then from the Scythians, many models of weapons and horse equipment, but improved the design of these items and set up their mass production for their own needs and for the same nomads.

Kobans lived mainly in unfortified settlements located in inaccessible places: on foothill hills, sometimes even on sheer cliffs, along river valleys on high plateaus, in gorges on flat spurs (Serzhen-Yurt, Bamut). The dwellings were adobe or "turluch" (wooden frame with clay coating), sometimes on cobblestone foundations. Stone houses are also found in the highlands. They often stood in groups, walls to each other, sometimes entire blocks separated by cobbled streets. Pottery and blacksmith workshops are also found in the settlements.

Inventory of cultures of the late Bronze Age of the Caucasus:
1 - bracelet; 2, 11 - pendants; 3, 4 - brooches; 5, 6, 9, 10 - zoo- and anthropomorphic figurines; 7 - hryvnia; 8 - pin; 12-17 - ceramics (1-11 - bronze)

The basis of the funeral rite was the laying of a corpse, but cases of cremation are also known. Burial grounds, as a rule, are barrowless; the construction of burial mounds was practiced infrequently and was a consequence of the influence of the steppe nomads. Grave structures are very diverse: these are ordinary pits, and pits lined with torn stone or cobblestone along the edges, and stone boxes with walls made of massive sandstone or shale slabs, covered with an even more powerful slab, etc. Tools, weapons (an obligatory attribute of male burials), a bridle, vessels, parting food were placed in the graves. Burials of men with a bridled horse are known.

THE LATE BRONZE AGE WITHIN THE EASTERN ZONE OF THE EUROPEAN METALLURGICAL PROVINCE

The European metallurgical province covered the territory of Central, Western, Northern and partly Eastern Europe. It included centers of metalworking, distinguished by a noticeable originality, but not differentiated with a sufficient degree of reliability. The eastern zone of the European province (which will be discussed below) included two blocks of cultures and production centers, which date back in the traditional chronology system of the 17th/16th-10th/9th centuries. BC.
The southern - core - block is associated with the community of cultures with roller ceramics (KVK) (see chapter 7.1 - about the cultures of the KVK community, which was part of the Eurasian province). The range of Western cultures of the KVK community is the steppe and southern forest-steppe from the interfluve of the Seversky Donets and the Dnieper to the Lower Danube and the Eastern Carpathians. Two zones of cultures are distinguished here: Thracian and North Black Sea. The first of them outlines the Pshenichevo and Babadag cultures in the northeast of the Balkan Peninsula and in Dobruja, Koslodzhen - in the lower reaches of the Danube, Noah and the so-called Early Hallstatt cultures chronologically following it (or cultural monuments of the Thracian Hallstatt) - in the Carpatho-Danube region. The northern Black Sea region is the contact zone of the European and Eurasian provinces. The Sabatinovskaya and genetically related Belozerskaya cultures are localized here. In the lower reaches of the Don and Kuban, monuments of the Kobyakovo and Kuban cultures adjoin them.

The North Black Sea cultures of the KVK community are formed on the basis of the local Babinskaya culture (or the culture of multi-rolled ceramics; see 7.1) and with a clear impulse from the east (Abashevskaya and early Rubbing cultures).

Cultures of the European Metallurgical Province:
1-5 - knives and daggers; 6-8 - spearheads; 9-11 - pins; 12 - fibula; 13-18 - Celts; 19 - suspension; 20, 21 - bracelets; 22, 23 - molds for casting a billhook and a spearhead; 24-27 - cheek-pieces; 28 - stamp for embossing leather; 29-33 - arrowheads; 34-41 - ceramics (1-2, 4-10, 12-21 - bronze; 3 - bronze and iron; 11, 24-33 - bone; 22, 23 - stone)

The northern block is associated with the European cultures of the so-called "post-cord horizon". Their range is the forest-steppe and the zone of broad-leaved forests of the Right-Bank and part of the Left-Bank Ukraine, Southern Belarus, and the Baltic states. In the west, in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, they are located mainly north of the Carpathians. The earliest cultures of this block are the Luzhitskaya, Tshinetskaya, Maryanovskaya, Komarovskaya, etc. The cultures of the final Bronze Age are genetically related to them - Belogrudovskaya Vysotskaya, Lebedovskaya, Bondarikhinskaya, early Chernolesskaya, etc.

The cultures of the northern block were formed on the basis of the cultures of Corded Ware and battle axes of the early and middle Bronze Ages - the Middle Dnieper, Unetitskaya, etc. ceramics, pozdnyakovskaya and early "textile" of the Volga-Oka interfluve.

Tshinetskaya and Belogrudovskaya (14, 15) cultures of Northern Ukraine:
1 - fibula; 2 - spiral; 3-6 - flint arrowheads; 7-9 - pierce; 10, 11 - pins; 12 - temporal ring; 13 - ax; 14, 15 - sickles; 16, 17, 20-24 - ceramics; 18 - whorl; 19 - adze (1, 2, 7-12 - bronze; 13, 19 - stone; 14, 15 - flint and horn)

The formation of the eastern zone of the European province was largely determined by the economic upsurge, which at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. covered the Carpatho-Danube region. The growth of metalworking is especially noticeable in the Thracian and North Black Sea zones of the KVK commonality. Copper production was carried out primarily on the basis of rich copper and polymetallic deposits in Transylvania and other regions of the Balkan-Carpathian region. A significantly smaller role was played by the Donetsk Mining and Metallurgical Center and the import of raw materials from the producing centers of the Eurasian province. In the Carpathians, compared with the previous era, gold mining has noticeably increased. It went to the manufacture of not only jewelry, but also precious dishes and ceremonial weapons.

The explosive growth of metal production was accompanied by qualitative changes. As in the Eurasian province, in the west, tin bronzes come into use, stone casting molds are used, and the casting of tools and weapons with a blind (non-through) bushing begins. Among them are Celts (earless, one- or two-eared), spearheads (without slits and with slits on the pen), chisels and adzes. Sickles of various modifications, short swords, single- and double-edged knives, flat adzes, etc. were also made. At the end of the Bronze Age, finds of iron and bimetallic items, especially knives, became more and more frequent. The products of the centers of metalworking in the European province (Ingulo-Krasnomayatsky, Kardashinsky, Zavadovo-Loboikovsky, etc.) were distinguished by expressive standard forms of tools and weapons, as well as a huge series of the latter. They are concentrated mainly in hoards - small and large, sometimes gigantic. Collections of casting molds are also hidden in the treasures. Perhaps they belonged individual families or even clans of blacksmiths.

The production of bronze items in the northern cultures of this province (they are also called "post-cord") is characterized by a significantly smaller scale. A prominent role in it belongs to a variety of decorations, in which the forms of the previous - the Middle Bronze Age are easily guessed. The types of tools and weapons repeat the North Black Sea and Balkan-Carpathian samples.

The processes of cultural genesis in the eastern zone of the European province were characterized by active contacts and interaction between the cultures of the southern and northern blocks. This was reflected in the appearance in the post-cord cultures (especially in Belogrudovskaya) of pottery with rollers, which is considered characteristic of Sabatinovskaya, Noa, Belozerskaya and other cultures of the KVK community. At the end of the Bronze Age, under the influence of the cultures of the Thracian halyitat in the northern forest-steppe, in the Vysotsk and Belogrudov cultures, black polished goblets, bowls, korchagi appeared, sometimes inlaid with white paste. At the same time, in the steppe Sabatinovskaya and Belozerskaya cultures, tulip-shaped vessels are known, which are characteristic of post-cord cultures. In the early Bondarikhinsky monuments of the Dnieper Left Bank, vessels with vertical combs and “textile” imprints on the outer surface are expressive, the origins of which are in the Volga-Oka interfluve.

The southern and northern blocks of cultures of the European province are characterized by common and special features in home building. Among the common - a combination of deep dugouts and semi-dugouts with ground dwellings and outbuildings located on the banks of rivers, estuaries, lakes, beams. In the south, in the Sabatinovskaya and Belozerskaya cultures, dwellings with stone foundation walls are also common. The roofs were flat, single and gable, hipped roofs. Dwellings were built using a frame-pillar structure, when a mat was laid on the central pillars, which served as the basis for the rafters; were heated by 1-3 hearths.

The cultures of the eastern zone of the European province are characterized by large and small burial grounds. At the same time, both in the south and in the north of Ukraine, at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, the burial rite under kurgans was preserved, but in the forest-steppe, the ancient traditions of local cultures - with their characteristic pound burials - prevailed faster. They are without external signs, from several dozen burials, grouped 3-4 together. There are small ground burial grounds located on the territory of settlements. The stone structures that were widespread in the previous Corded Ware cultures are preserved (especially in Volhynia and Podolia), but they are becoming simpler (stone boxes; earth pits lined with stones; a fence of stones around burials on the horizon). The most massive are burials in simple soil pits, sometimes lined and covered with wood.

At the beginning of the late Bronze Age, the rite of cadaverization dominated, crouched on its side, with different orientations to the cardinal points. On the Dnieper Left Bank, it will remain until the end of the Bronze Age. On the Right Bank, it was gradually replaced by the rite of cremation of the buried. By the end of the era, he already dominated. In the Dniester region, cremations were found not only in ground burials, but also in mounds (at the level of the ancient horizon), in urns. Cremation in most cases was carried out on the side, and the remains were poured into urns or pits.

Late Bronze Age dwelling (Pustynka):
1 - reconstruction of the process of building a dwelling of a frame-pillar structure; 2 - reconstruction of the appearance of the dwelling

Thus, at the end of the Bronze Age, the vast European region of cultures of the fields of funerary urns, extending far to the west, included cultures related to the origins of the same vast region of cultures of Corded Ware and battle axes of the Middle Bronze Age. The population of these cultures is identified with the northern branch of the most ancient Indo-Europeans. The migration of early Hallstatt cultures to the east led to a change in the ethnocultural map in the Northern Black Sea region. In the west of the region, the dominant role passed to the Thracian ethno-cultural groups.

On this day:

• Birthdays
• 1826 Was born Johannes Overbeck- German archaeologist, specialist in ancient archeology.
• 1851 Was born Alexey Parfyonovich Sapunov- historian, archaeologist and local historian, professor, one of the initiators of the creation of the Vitebsk Scientific Archival Commission, the Vitebsk branch of the Moscow Archaeological Institute, the Vitebsk Church Archaeological Museum.
• Days of death
• 1882 Died Viktor Konstantinovich Saveliev- Russian archaeologist and numismatist, who collected a significant collection of coins.

Bronze Age- an era of human history identified on the basis of archeological data, characterized by the leading role of bronze products, which was associated with an improvement in the processing of metals such as copper and tin obtained from ore deposits, and the subsequent production of bronze from them. The Bronze Age is the second, late phase of the Early Metal Age, succeeding the Copper Age and preceding the Iron Age. In general, the chronological framework of the Bronze Age: 35/33 - 13/11 centuries BC uh., but different cultures are different.

Allocate early, middle and late stages of the Bronze Age. During the Bronze Age, the formation, development and change of a number of metallurgical provinces took place.

- Early armor. century.

The line separating copper age from the Bronze Age, there was a collapse of the Balkan-Carpathian metallurgical province (1st half of 4 thousand) and the formation of approx. 35/33 centuries Circumpontian metallurgical province. Within the Circumpontian metallurgical province, which dominated during the Early and Middle Bronze Age, copper ore centers of the South Caucasus, Anatolia, the Balkan-Carpathian region, and the Aegean Islands were discovered and began to be exploited. To the west of it, the mining and metallurgical centers of the Southern Alps, the Iberian Peninsula, and the British Isles functioned; to the south and southeast, metal-bearing cultures are known in Egypt, Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan, right up to Pakistan.

The place and time of the discovery of methods for obtaining bronze is not known for certain. It can be assumed that bronze was simultaneously discovered in several places. Earliest bronzes with tin impurities are found in Iraq and Iran and dated end4 thousand BC e.

AT Middle Bronze Age (26/25 -20/19 centuries BC) there is an expansion (mainly to the north) of the zone occupied by metal-bearing cultures. The Circumpontian metallurgical province basically retains its structure and continues to be central system producing metallurgical centers of Eurasia.

- Early Late Bronze Age is the collapse of the Circumpontian metallurgical province at the turn of 3 and 2 thousand and the formation of a whole chain of new metallurgical provinces, to varying degrees reflecting the most important features of the mining and metallurgical production practiced in the central centers of the Circumpontian metallurgical province.

Among the metallurgical provinces of the Late Bronze Age, the largest was the Eurasian steppe metallurgical province(up to 8 million sq. km.), which inherited the traditions of the Circumpontian metallurgical province. From the south, it was adjoined by the Caucasian metallurgical province and the Iranian-Afghan metallurgical province, small in area, but distinguished by a special richness and variety of forms of products, as well as the nature of alloys. From the Sayano-Altai to Indochina, the producing centers of the complex formation of the East Asian metallurgical province spread. Various forms of high-quality products from the European metallurgical province, which stretched from the Northern Balkans to the Atlantic coast of Europe, are concentrated mainly in rich and numerous hoards. From the south, it adjoined the Mediterranean metallurgical province, which differed significantly from the European metallurgical province in terms of production methods and product forms.

In the 13/12 centuries. BC e. there is a catastrophe of the Bronze Age: cultures disintegrate or change in almost the entire space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, over several centuries - up to the 10/8 centuries. BC e. great migrations take place. The transition to the Early Iron Age begins. The longest recurrences of the Bronze Age were preserved in the Celtic territory (Atlantic Europe).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bronze Age- an era of human history identified on the basis of archeological data, characterized by the leading role of bronze products, which was associated with an improvement in the processing of metals such as copper and tin obtained from ore deposits, and the subsequent production of bronze from them. The Bronze Age is the second, late phase of the Early Metal Age, succeeding the Copper Age and preceding the Iron Age. In general, the chronological framework of the Bronze Age: 35/33 - 13/11 centuries. BC e., but different cultures are different.

General periodization

There are early, middle and late stages of the Bronze Age. At the beginning of the Bronze Age, the zone of cultures with metal covered no more than 8-10 million km², and by its end, their area had increased to 40-43 million km². During the Bronze Age, the formation, development and change of a number of metallurgical provinces took place.

Early Bronze Age

The boundary separating the Copper Age from the Bronze Age was the collapse of the Balkan-Carpathian metallurgical province (1st half of 4 thousand) and the formation of ca. 35/33 centuries Circumpontian metallurgical province. Within the Circumpontian metallurgical province, which dominated during the Early and Middle Bronze Age, copper ore centers of the South Caucasus, Anatolia, the Balkan-Carpathian region, and the Aegean Islands were discovered and began to be exploited. To the west of it, the mining and metallurgical centers of the Southern Alps, the Iberian Peninsula, and the British Isles functioned; to the south and southeast, metal-bearing cultures are known in Egypt, Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan, right up to Pakistan.

The place and time of the discovery of methods for obtaining bronze is not known for certain. It can be assumed that bronze was simultaneously discovered in several places. The earliest bronzes with tin impurities were found in Iraq and Iran and date back to the end of the 4th millennium BC. e. Arsenic-containing bronzes were produced in Anatolia and on both sides of the Caucasus in the early 3rd millennium BC. e. And some bronze products of the Maikop culture date back to the middle of the 4th millennium BC. e. Although this issue is debatable and other results of the analyzes indicate that the same Maikop bronze items were made in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e.

With the beginning of the Bronze Age, two blocks of Eurasian human communities took shape and began to actively interact. To the south of the central folded mountain belt (Sayan-Altai - Pamir and Tien Shan - Caucasus - Carpathians - Alps), societies with a complex social structure, an economy based on agriculture in combination with animal husbandry, cities, writing, states appeared. To the north, in the Eurasian steppe, militant societies of mobile pastoralists were formed.

Middle Bronze Age

In the Middle Bronze Age (26/25-20/19 centuries BC) there was an expansion (mainly to the north) of the zone occupied by metal-bearing cultures. The Circumpontian metallurgical province basically retains its structure and continues to be the central system of producing metallurgical centers of Eurasia.

Late Bronze Age

The beginning of the Late Bronze Age is the disintegration of the Circumpontian metallurgical province at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd millennia and the formation of a whole chain of new metallurgical provinces, to varying degrees reflecting the most important features of the mining and metallurgical production practiced in the central centers of the Circumpontian metallurgical province.

Among the metallurgical provinces of the late Bronze Age, the largest was the Eurasian steppe metallurgical province (up to 8 million km²), which inherited the traditions of the Circumpontian metallurgical province. It was adjoined from the south by a small area, but distinguished by a special richness and variety of forms of products, as well as the nature of alloys, the Caucasian metallurgical province and the Iran-Afghan metallurgical province. From the Sayano-Altai to Indochina, the producing centers of the East Asian metallurgical province, complex in nature, spread. Various forms of high-quality products of the European metallurgical province, which stretched from the Northern Balkans to the Atlantic coast of Europe, are concentrated mainly in rich and numerous hoards. From the south, it adjoined the Mediterranean metallurgical province, which differed significantly from the European metallurgical province in terms of production methods and product forms.

By the beginning of the II millennium BC. e. the spread of Indo-European tribes to the east and west begins. The Andronovo culture, associated with the Indo-Iranians, occupies vast expanses of Central Eurasia (see Sintashta, Arkaim). The key to the success of the spread of the Indo-Europeans was their possession of such innovative technologies as the chariot and sword.

The influence of Caucasoid newcomers from the west marked the cultures of the Bronze Age in Southern Siberia - first of all, Karasuk and Tagar. The finds of identical weapons on a territory of thousands of kilometers (the so-called Seima-Turbinsky phenomenon) allow archaeologists to assume that over the native peoples of the forest belt of Eurasia from the 16th century. BC e. a certain mobile retinue elite dominated

Bronze Age in the Middle East

In the Middle East, the following dates correspond to 3 periods (the dates are very approximate):

• RBV- Early Bronze Age (3500-2000 BC)
• SBV- Middle Bronze Age (2000-1600 BC)
• PMB- Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 BC)

Each major period can be divided into shorter sub-categories: as an example RBV I, RBV II, SBV IIa etc.

The Bronze Age in the Middle East began in Anatolia (modern Turkey). The mountains of the Anatolian Highlands had rich deposits of copper and tin. Copper was also mined in Cyprus, Ancient Egypt, Israel, the Armenian Highlands, Iran and around the Persian Gulf. Copper was commonly mixed with arsenic, yet the region's growing demand for tin led to the creation of trade routes from Anatolia. Also, by sea routes, copper was imported to Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia.

The early Bronze Age is characterized by urbanization and the emergence of city-states, as well as the appearance of writing (Uruk, IV millennium BC). In the Middle Bronze Age, there was a significant balance of power in the region, (Amorites, Hittites, Hurrians, Hyksos and possibly Israelites).

The Late Bronze Age is characterized by competition between the powerful states of the region and their vassals (Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Hittites, Mitannians). Extensive contacts were established with the Aegean civilization (Achaeans), in which copper played an important role. The Bronze Age in the Middle East ended with a historical phenomenon, which among professionals is commonly called the bronze collapse. This phenomenon affected the entire Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Divisions of the Bronze Age

The ancient Near Eastern Bronze Age can be divided as follows:

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Align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark:(line,black) width:20 shift:(25,-5) bar:Phase color: era from: 3300 till: 3500 text:EMB 0 from: 3300 till: 3000 text :RBV I from: 3000 till: 2700 text:RBV II from: 2700 till: 2200 text:RBV III from: 2200 till: 2100 text:RBV IV from: 2100 till: 2000 text:SBV I from: 2000 till: 1750 text :SBV II A from: 1750 till: 1650 text:SBV II B from: 1650 till: 1550 text:SBV II C from: 1550 till: 1400 till: 1200 text:PBV II B bar:Period color: age from: 3300 till: 2100 text:Early Bronze Age (EBV) from: 2100 till: 1550 text:Middle Bronze Age (MBV) from: 2100 till: 1550 shift: (25,-20) text:(Intermediate Bronze Age) from: 1550 till: 1200 text:Late Bronze Age (LBV) bar:Age color: period from: 3300 till: 1200 shift:(-25,0) text:Bronze Age century

Europe

In the Bronze Age, Indo-European tribes penetrated into Europe, which put an end to the centuries-old development of Old Europe. The main cultures of the Bronze Age in Europe are Unetitskaya, burial fields, Terramara, Lusatian, Belogrudovskaya.

aegean islands

The first city-states formed in the XVII-XVI centuries. BC e. - Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos - had close cultural and trade ties with Crete, Mycenaean culture borrowed a lot from the Minoan civilization, the influence of which is felt in religious rites, secular life, artistic monuments; undoubtedly, the art of building ships was perceived from the Cretans.

East Asia

China

Historians disagree on the timing of the Bronze Age in China. The problem lies mainly in the term itself: it was originally intended to designate a historical period that began with the displacement of stone tools by bronze and ended with the replacement of the latter by iron - that is, the use of new material automatically meant the obsolescence of the former. In relation to China, however, attempts to define clear boundaries of the era are complicated by the fact that the advent of iron smelting technology did not have a clear one-time effect on the use of bronze tools: they continued to be used simultaneously with iron ones. The earliest finds of bronze items belong to the Majiayao culture (3100 - 2700 BC); from this point on, society gradually entered the Bronze Age.

The origin of Chinese bronze metallurgy is associated with the Erlitou culture. Some historians believe that the corresponding historical period should be attributed to the Shang dynasty, others are convinced that we should be talking about the earlier Xia dynasty. In turn, experts from the US National Gallery of Art define the Bronze Age in China as the period between 2000 and 771 BC. e., linking its beginning, again, with the Erlitou culture, and its abrupt end with the fall of the Western Zhou dynasty. Such an interpretation ensures the clarity of temporal boundaries, but does not sufficiently take into account the preservation of the importance and relevance of bronze for Chinese metallurgy and culture in general.

Since the dates given are later in comparison, for example, with the discovery of bronze in ancient Mesopotamia, a number of researchers see reason to believe that the relevant technologies were imported to China from outside, and not developed by the inhabitants of the country on their own. Other scientists, on the contrary, are convinced that Chinese bronze metallurgy could have formed autonomously, without external influences. Proponents of borrowing cite in particular the discovery of Tarim mummies, which they believe may be evidence in favor of a way of borrowing technology from the west.

Iron has been found in China since the historical period associated with the Zhou Dynasty, but its use is minimal. Chinese literature dating from the sixth century BC. e., testifies to the presence of knowledge on the smelting of iron, but, nevertheless, bronze continues to occupy a significant place in the results of archaeological and historical research even after this moment. Historian William White, for example, argued that bronze was not displaced by iron until the end of the Zhou Dynasty (256 BCE), and that bronzes dominated metal vessels until the very beginning of the Han Dynasty (221 BCE). .) .

Chinese bronze artifacts, as a rule, either have a utilitarian-applied character (spearheads, adze blades, etc.), or are samples of ritual utensils - more carefully made samples of everyday items (vessels, tools, weapons, etc.) . As an example, large sacrificial tripods, known under the name "Din", although there were other specific forms, characterized by certain differences. Those ancient Chinese ritual utensils that have survived to this day are usually richly decorated, often using taoté motifs - in other words, stylized images of the faces of animals or demons, as well as various abstract symbols. Many large items also have inscriptions on them, which make up the bulk of the surviving examples of ancient Chinese writing; with their help, historians and archaeologists trace the course of Chinese history, especially during the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BC).

In particular, the bronze utensils of the Western Zhou "document" vast layers of history that are not described in the surviving texts, authored by people with different rank or position in society. For obvious physical reasons, bronze records are much more likely to survive than manuscripts. These records are usually divided into four main parts: a reference to the date and place of events, the name of the incident recorded, a list of goods given to the artisan in exchange for the product, and dedication. The relative reference points provided by these vessels allowed historians to associate them with certain periods within the Western Zhou, and, consequently, to trace the evolution of not only the items themselves, but also the events described on them.

Indochina

North Africa

Ancient Egypt and a number of neighboring cultures of northeast Africa (for example, Nubia) played an important role in the history of the Bronze Age. European cultures of the Bronze Age penetrated into northern Africa (for example, traces of the culture of bell-shaped cups were found in Morocco), metallurgy penetrates there only during the Phoenician colonization, around 1100 BC. e., and in the rest of Africa, metallurgy spreads later, but begins immediately with the processing of iron.

Bronze Age architecture

In the Bronze Age, monumental architecture became predominant, the emergence of which is associated with the development of religious ideas, with the cult of ancestors and nature, that is, with the spiritual ideas of society. Megalithic structures were erected by the efforts of the entire primitive community and were an expression of the unity of the clan.

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Notes

1. Balkan-Carpathian metallurgical province // BRE. T.2. M., 2005.
2. Eurasian steppe metallurgical province // BRE. T.9. M., 2007.
3. Caucasian metallurgical province // BRE. T.12. M., 2008.
4. Iranian-Afghan metallurgical province // BRE. T.11. M., 2008.
5. East Asian Metallurgical Province // BDT. T.5. M., 2006.
6. European Metallurgical Province // BDT. T.9. M., 2007.
7. Meotian archaeological culture // BRE. T.20. M., 2012.
8. Catacomb culture // BRE. T.13. M., 2008.
9. Arias // BDT. T.2. M., 2005.
10. Kargaly // BRE. T.13. M., 2008.
11. Arkaim // BRE. T.2. M., 2005.
13. Lchashen // BRE. T.18. M., 2011.
14. Luristan bronzes // BRE. T.18. M., 2011.
15. Martini, I. Peter. Landscapes and Societies: Selected Cases. - Springer, 2010. - P. 310. - ISBN 90-481-9412-1.
16. Higham, Charles. Encyclopedia of ancient Asian civilizations. - Infobase Publishing, 2004. - P. 200. - ISBN 0-8160-4640-9.
17. Chang, K.C.: "Studies of Shang Archeology", pp. 6-7, 1. Yale University Press, 1982.
18. . Nga.gov. Retrieved January 17, 2010. .
19. Li Liu; The Chinese Neolithic, Cambridge University Press, 2005
20. Retrieved May 13, 2010
21. Jan Romgard (2008). "". Sino-Platonic Papers.
22. Barnard, N.: "Bronze Casting and Bronze Alloys in Ancient China", p. 14. The Australian National University and Monumenta Serica, 1961.
23. White, W.C.: "Bronze Culture of Ancient China", p. 208. University of Toronto Press, 1956.
24. Erdberg, E.: "Ancient Chinese Bronzes", p. 20. Siebenbad-Verlag, 1993.
25. Shaughnessy, E. L. "Sources of Western Zhou History". University of California Press, 1982.
27. Dong Son // BDT. T.9. M., 2007.
28. Lunghoa // BDT. T.18. M., 2011.
29. N.I. Kirei. Ethnography of the peoples of Africa. M. 1983, p.26

Literature

• Chernykh E. N., Avilova L. I., Orlovskaya L. B. Metallurgical provinces and radiocarbon chronology. M., 2000
• Chernykh E. N., Kuzminykh S. V. Ancient metallurgy of Northern Eurasia (the Seima-Turbino phenomenon). M., 1989
• A.F. Harding. European Societies in the Bronze Age. Camb., 2000
• Chernykh E.N. Ancient Metallurgy in the USSR. The Early Metal Age. Cambridge, 1992
• Metallurgy in Ancient Eastern Eurasia from the Urals to the Yellow River. Linduff (ed.). K., The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd. 2004.
• The Bronze Age Civilization in Central Asia. Armonk. Kohl F.L. (ed.). N.Y., 1981

Links

Major archaeological cultures bronze age Eurasia Atlantic Europe Italy and the Adriatic Carpathians, Balkans and Crete Central Europe Forest strip of Eurasia Eurasian steppes Ciscaucasia, Northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia middle Asia East Asia South Asia

An excerpt characterizing the Bronze Age

At the very beginning of the campaign, our armies were cut, and sole purpose what we are aiming at is to link them up, although there is no advantage in linking up armies in order to retreat and draw the enemy inland. The emperor is with the army to inspire it in defending every step of the Russian land, and not to retreat. A huge Drissa camp is being set up according to Pfuel's plan and it is not supposed to retreat further. The sovereign reproaches the commander-in-chief for every step of retreat. Not only the burning of Moscow, but the admission of the enemy to Smolensk cannot even be imagined by the emperor’s imagination, and when the armies unite, the sovereign is indignant that Smolensk was taken and burned and not given before the walls of his general battle.
So the sovereign thinks, but Russian military leaders and all Russian people are even more indignant at the thought that ours are retreating into the interior of the country.
Napoleon, having cut the armies, moves inland and misses several cases of battle. In the month of August he is in Smolensk and thinks only about how he can go further, although, as we now see, this forward movement is obviously fatal for him.
The facts clearly show that neither Napoleon foresaw the danger in moving towards Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian military leaders then think about luring Napoleon, but thought about the opposite. The lure of Napoleon into the interior of the country did not happen according to anyone's plan (no one believed in the possibility of this), but came from a complex game of intrigues, goals, desires of people - participants in the war, who did not guess what should be, and what was the only salvation of Russia. Everything happens by accident. The armies are cut at the start of the campaign. We try to combine them with the obvious goal of giving battle and holding the enemy's advance, but even in this desire to unite, avoiding battles with the strongest enemy and involuntarily retreating at an acute angle, we lead the French to Smolensk. But it is not enough to say that we are withdrawing at an acute angle because the French are moving between both armies - this angle is becoming even sharper, and we are moving even further because Barclay de Tolly, an unpopular German, is hated by Bagration (who has to become under his command ), and Bagration, commanding the 2nd Army, tries not to join Barclay for as long as possible, so as not to become under his command. Bagration does not join for a long time (although in this the main objective all commanding persons) because it seems to him that on this march he puts his army in danger and that it is most advantageous for him to retreat to the left and south, harassing the enemy from the flank and rear and manning his army in Ukraine. And it seems that he invented it because he does not want to obey the hated and junior rank German Barclay.
The emperor is with the army to inspire it, and his presence and ignorance of what to decide on, and a huge number of advisers and plans destroy the energy of the actions of the 1st army, and the army retreats.
It is supposed to stop in the Dris camp; but unexpectedly Pauluchi, aiming for the commander-in-chief, with his energy acts on Alexander, and the whole plan of Pfuel is abandoned, and the whole thing is entrusted to Barclay. But since Barclay does not inspire confidence, his power is limited.
The armies are fragmented, there is no unity of the authorities, Barclay is not popular; but from this confusion, fragmentation and unpopularity of the German commander-in-chief, on the one hand, indecision and avoidance of battle (which could not be resisted if the armies were together and Barclay would not be the head), on the other hand, more and more resentment against the Germans and arousal of the patriotic spirit.
Finally, the sovereign leaves the army, and as the only and most convenient pretext for his departure, the idea is chosen that he needs to inspire the people in the capitals to initiate a people's war. And this trip of the sovereign and Moscow triples the strength of the Russian army.
The sovereign leaves the army in order not to hamper the unity of power of the commander in chief, and hopes that more decisive measures will be taken; but the position of the commanders of the armies is still more confused and weakened. Benigsen, the Grand Duke and a swarm of adjutant generals remain with the army in order to monitor the actions of the commander in chief and excite him to energy, and Barclay, feeling even less free under the eyes of all these sovereign eyes, becomes even more cautious for decisive action and avoids battles.
Barclay stands for caution. The Tsarevich hints at treason and demands a general battle. Lubomirsky, Branitsky, Vlotsky and the like inflate all this noise so much that Barclay, under the pretext of delivering papers to the sovereign, sends the Poles adjutant generals to Petersburg and enters into an open struggle with Benigsen and the Grand Duke.
In Smolensk, finally, no matter how Bagration did not want it, the armies unite.
Bagration in a carriage drives up to the house occupied by Barclay. Barclay puts on a scarf, goes out to meet v reports to the senior rank of Bagration. Bagration, in the struggle of generosity, despite the seniority of the rank, submits to Barclay; but, having obeyed, agrees with him even less. Bagration personally, by order of the sovereign, informs him. He writes to Arakcheev: “The will of my sovereign, I can’t do it together with the minister (Barclay). For God's sake, send me somewhere to command a regiment, but I can't be here; and the whole main apartment is filled with Germans, so that it is impossible for a Russian to live, and there is no sense. I thought I truly served the sovereign and the fatherland, but in reality it turns out that I serve Barclay. I confess I don't want to." A swarm of Branicki, Winzingerode and the like poisons the relations of the commanders-in-chief even more, and even less unity comes out. They are going to attack the French in front of Smolensk. A general is sent to inspect the position. This general, hating Barclay, goes to his friend, the corps commander, and after spending a day with him, returns to Barclay and condemns on all counts the future battlefield, which he has not seen.
While there are disputes and intrigues about the future battlefield, while we are looking for the French, having made a mistake in their location, the French stumble upon Neverovsky's division and approach the very walls of Smolensk.
We must accept an unexpected battle in Smolensk in order to save our messages. The battle is given. Thousands are killed on both sides.
Smolensk is abandoned against the will of the sovereign and the whole people. But Smolensk was burned down by the inhabitants themselves, deceived by their governor, and the devastated inhabitants, setting an example for other Russians, go to Moscow, thinking only of their losses and inciting hatred for the enemy. Napoleon goes further, we retreat, and the very thing that was supposed to defeat Napoleon is achieved.

The next day after the departure of his son, Prince Nikolai Andreevich called Princess Marya to him.
- Well, are you satisfied now? - he said to her, - quarreled with her son! Satisfied? All you needed was! Satisfied?.. It hurts me, it hurts. I'm old and weak, and you wanted it. Well, rejoice, rejoice ... - And after that, Princess Marya did not see her father for a week. He was sick and did not leave the office.
To her surprise, Princess Mary noticed that during this time of illness, the old prince also did not allow m lle Bourienne to see him. One Tikhon followed him.
A week later, the prince came out and began his former life again, with special activities engaged in buildings and gardens and ending all previous relations with m lle Bourienne. His appearance and cold tone with Princess Mary seemed to say to her: “You see, you invented a lie to Prince Andrei about my relationship with this Frenchwoman and quarreled with me; and you see that I don't need you or the Frenchwoman."
Princess Mary spent one half of the day at Nikolushka's, following his lessons, herself giving him lessons in Russian and music, and talking with Desalle; the other part of the day she spent in her half with books, with the old nurse, and with God's people, who sometimes came to her from the back porch.
Princess Marya thought about the war the way women think about war. She was afraid for her brother who was there, she was horrified, not understanding her, before the human cruelty that forced them to kill each other; but she did not understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her the same as all previous wars. She did not understand the significance of this war, despite the fact that Dessalles, her constant interlocutor, who was passionately interested in the course of the war, tried to explain his considerations to her, and despite the fact that the people of God who came to her all spoke in their own horror about popular rumors about the invasion of the Antichrist, and despite the fact that Julie, now Princess Drubetskaya, who again entered into correspondence with her, wrote patriotic letters to her from Moscow.
“I am writing to you in Russian, my good friend- wrote Julie, - because I have hatred for all the French, as well as for their language, which I cannot hear speak ... We in Moscow are all enthusiastic through enthusiasm for our adored emperor.
My poor husband endures labor and hunger in Jewish taverns; but the news I have makes me even more excited.
You heard, right, about the heroic feat of Raevsky, who embraced his two sons and said: “I will die with them, but we will not hesitate! And indeed, although the enemy was twice as strong as us, we did not hesitate. We spend our time as best we can; but in war, as in war. Princess Alina and Sophie sit with me all day long, and we, the unfortunate widows of living husbands, have wonderful conversations over lint; only you, my friend, are missing ... etc.
Mostly, Princess Mary did not understand the full significance of this war because the old prince never spoke about it, did not recognize it, and laughed at dinner at Desalles, who spoke about this war. The prince's tone was so calm and sure that Princess Mary, without reasoning, believed him.
Throughout the month of July, the old prince was extremely active and even lively. He also laid a new garden and a new building, a building for courtyards. One thing that bothered Princess Marya was that he slept little and, having changed his habit of sleeping in the study, every day he changed the place of his lodging for the night. Either he ordered his camp bed to be made up in the gallery, or he remained on the sofa or in the Voltaire chair in the living room and dozed without undressing, while not m lle Bourienne, but the boy Petrusha read to him; then he spent the night in the dining room.
On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrei. In the first letter, received shortly after his departure, Prince Andrei humbly asked for forgiveness from his father for what he allowed himself to tell him, and asked him to return his favor to him. The old prince answered this letter with an affectionate letter, and after this letter he alienated the Frenchwoman from himself. The second letter of Prince Andrew, written from near Vitebsk, after the French had occupied it, consisted of a brief description of the entire campaign with a plan drawn in the letter, and of considerations about the further course of the campaign. In this letter, Prince Andrei presented to his father the inconvenience of his position close to the theater of war, on the very line of movement of troops, and advised him to go to Moscow.
At dinner that day, in response to the words of Dessalles, who said that, as he heard, the French had already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered Prince Andrei's letter.
“I received it from Prince Andrei today,” he said to Princess Marya, “didn’t you read it?”
“No, mon pere, [father],” the princess answered frightened. She couldn't read letters she hadn't even heard about receiving.
“He writes about this war,” said the prince with that contemptuous smile that had become accustomed to him, with which he always spoke about a real war.
“It must be very interesting,” Desalles said. - The prince is able to know ...
– Ah, very interesting! said m lle Bourienne.
“Go and bring it to me,” the old prince turned to m lle Bourienne. - You know, on small table under paperweight.
M lle Bourienne jumped up happily.
“Oh no,” he yelled, frowning. - Come on, Mikhail Ivanovich.
Mikhail Ivanovich got up and went into the study. But as soon as he left, the old prince, looking around uneasily, threw down his napkin and went himself.
“They don’t know how to do anything, they mix everything up.
While he was walking, Princess Mary, Dessalles, m lle Bourienne and even Nikolushka looked at each other in silence. old prince returned with a hasty step, accompanied by Mikhail Ivanovich, with a letter and a plan, which he, not allowing anyone to read during dinner, put beside him.
Going into the living room, he handed the letter to Princess Marya and, laying out before him the plan of the new building, on which he fixed his eyes, ordered her to read it aloud. After reading the letter, Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father.
He stared at the plan, apparently deep in thought.
- What do you think about it, prince? Desalle allowed himself to ask a question.
- I! I! .. - as if unpleasantly waking up, said the prince, not taking his eyes off the plan of construction.
- It is quite possible that the theater of war will come so close to us ...
– Ha ha ha! Theater of War! - said the prince. - I said and I say that the theater of war is Poland, and the enemy will never penetrate further than the Neman.
Desalles looked with surprise at the prince, who was talking about the Neman, when the enemy was already at the Dnieper; but Princess Mary, who had forgotten the geographical location of the Neman, thought that what her father was saying was true.
- When the snow grows, they will drown in the swamps of Poland. They just can’t see,” the prince said, apparently thinking about the campaign of 1807, which, as it seemed, was so recent. - Benigsen should have entered Prussia earlier, things would have taken a different turn ...
“But, prince,” Desalles said timidly, “the letter speaks of Vitebsk…
“Ah, in a letter, yes ...” the prince said displeasedly, “yes ... yes ...” His face suddenly assumed a gloomy expression. He paused. - Yes, he writes, the French are defeated, at what river is this?
Dessal lowered his eyes.
“The prince does not write anything about this,” he said quietly.
- Doesn't he write? Well, I didn't invent it myself. Everyone was silent for a long time.
“Yes ... yes ... Well, Mikhail Ivanovich,” he suddenly said, raising his head and pointing to the construction plan, “tell me how you want to remake it ...
Mikhail Ivanovich approached the plan, and the prince, after talking with him about the plan for a new building, glancing angrily at Princess Marya and Desalle, went to his room.
Princess Mary saw Dessal's embarrassed and surprised look fixed on her father, noticed his silence and was amazed that the father had forgotten his son's letter on the table in the living room; but she was afraid not only to speak and question Dessalles about the reason for his embarrassment and silence, but she was afraid to even think about it.
In the evening, Mikhail Ivanovich, sent from the prince, came to Princess Mary for a letter from Prince Andrei, which had been forgotten in the drawing room. Princess Mary submitted a letter. Although it was unpleasant for her, she allowed herself to ask Mikhail Ivanovich what her father was doing.
“Everyone is busy,” Mikhail Ivanovich said with a respectfully mocking smile that made Princess Marya turn pale. “They are very worried about the new building. We read a little, and now,” said Mikhail Ivanovich, lowering his voice, “at the bureau, they must have taken care of the will. (Recently, one of the prince's favorite activities was to work on papers that were supposed to remain after his death and which he called a will.)
- And Alpatych is sent to Smolensk? asked Princess Mary.
- How about, he has been waiting for a long time.

When Mikhail Ivanovich returned with the letter to his study, the prince, wearing spectacles, with a lampshade over his eyes and a candle, was sitting by the open bureau, with papers in his hand held far back, and in a somewhat solemn pose read his papers (remarks, as he called them), which were to be delivered to the sovereign after his death.
When Mikhail Ivanovich entered, he had tears in his eyes of recollection of the time when he wrote what he was reading now. He took the letter from Mikhail Ivanovich's hands, put it in his pocket, packed the papers and called Alpatych, who had been waiting for a long time.
On a piece of paper he had written down what was needed in Smolensk, and he, walking around the room past Alpatych, who was waiting at the door, began to give orders.
- First, postal paper, you hear, eight ten, here's the model; gold-edged ... a sample, so that it would certainly be according to it; varnish, sealing wax - according to a note from Mikhail Ivanych.
He walked around the room and looked at the memo.
- Then the governor personally give a letter about the record.
Later, latches were needed for the doors of the new building, certainly of such a style that the prince himself invented. Then a binding box had to be ordered for laying the will.
Giving orders to Alpatych lasted more than two hours. The prince did not let him go. He sat down, thought, and, closing his eyes, dozed off. Alpatych stirred.
- Well, go, go; If you need anything, I'll send it.
Alpatych left. The prince again went up to the bureau, looked into it, touched his papers with his hand, locked them again, and sat down at the table to write a letter to the governor.
It was already late when he got up, sealing the letter. He wanted to sleep, but he knew that he would not sleep and that the worst thoughts came to him in bed. He called Tikhon and went with him through the rooms to tell him where to make the bed for that night. He walked, trying on every corner.
Everywhere he felt bad, but the worst of all was the familiar sofa in the office. This sofa was terrible to him, probably because of the heavy thoughts that he changed his mind while lying on it. It was not good anywhere, but all the same, the corner in the sofa room behind the piano was best of all: he had never slept here before.
Tikhon brought a bed with the waiter and began to set.
- Not like that, not like that! the prince shouted, and he himself moved a quarter away from the corner, and then again closer.
“Well, I’ve finally redone everything, now I’ll rest,” the prince thought, and left Tikhon to undress himself.
Grimacing with annoyance at the effort that had to be made to take off his caftan and trousers, the prince undressed, sank heavily onto the bed, and seemed to be lost in thought, looking contemptuously at his yellow, withered legs. He did not think, but he hesitated before the work ahead of him to raise these legs and move on the bed. “Oh, how hard! Oh, if only as soon as possible, these works would end quickly, and you would let me go! he thought. He made this effort for the twentieth time, pursing his lips, and lay down. But as soon as he lay down, all of a sudden the whole bed moved evenly back and forth under him, as if breathing heavily and pushing. It happened to him almost every night. He opened his eyes that had been closed.
"No rest, damned ones!" he grumbled with anger at someone. “Yes, yes, there was something else important, something very important, I saved myself for the night in bed. Gate valves? No, he said about it. No, something like that was in the living room. Princess Mary was lying about something. Dessal something - this fool - said. Something in my pocket, I don't remember.
- Silence! What did they talk about at dinner?
- About the prince, Mikhail ...
- Shut up, shut up. The prince slammed his hand on the table. - Yes! I know, a letter from Prince Andrei. Princess Mary was reading. Desal said something about Vitebsk. Now I will read.
He ordered the letter to be taken out of his pocket and a table with lemonade and a vitushka, a wax candle, to be moved to the bed, and, putting on his glasses, he began to read. It was only then, in the stillness of the night, in the faint light from under the green cap, that he, having read the letter, for the first time for a moment understood its meaning.
“The French are in Vitebsk, after four crossings they can be at Smolensk; maybe they're already there."
- Silence! Tikhon jumped up. - No, no, no, no! he shouted.
He hid the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And he imagined the Danube, a bright afternoon, reeds, a Russian camp, and he enters, he, a young general, without a single wrinkle on his face, cheerful, cheerful, ruddy, into the painted tent of Potemkin, and a burning feeling of envy for his beloved, just as strong, as then, worries him. And he recalls all those words that were said then at the first meeting with Potemkin. And he imagines with yellowness in her fat face a short, fat woman - Mother Empress, her smiles, words, when she received him for the first time, kindly, and he recalls her own face on the hearse and the collision with Zubov, which was then with her coffin for the right to approach her hand.
“Ah, rather, quickly return to that time, and so that everything now ends quickly, quickly, so that they leave me alone!”

Bald Mountains, the estate of Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, was sixty miles from Smolensk, behind it, and three miles from the Moscow road.
On the same evening, as the prince gave orders to Alpatych, Desalle, having demanded a meeting with Princess Mary, told her that since the prince was not completely healthy and was not taking any measures for his safety, and according to the letter of Prince Andrei, it was clear that his stay in the Bald Mountains unsafe, he respectfully advises her to write with Alpatych a letter to the head of the province in Smolensk with a request to notify her of the state of affairs and the degree of danger to which the Bald Mountains are exposed. Desalles wrote a letter for Princess Marya to the governor, which she signed, and this letter was given to Alpatych with an order to submit it to the governor and, in case of danger, to return as soon as possible.
Having received all the orders, Alpatych, escorted by his family, in a white downy hat (a princely gift), with a stick, just like the prince, went out to sit in a leather wagon laid by a trio of well-fed savras.
The bell was tied up, and the bells were stuffed with pieces of paper. The prince did not allow anyone to ride in the Bald Mountains with a bell. But Alpatych loved bells and bells on a long journey. The courtiers of Alpatych, the zemstvo, the clerk, the cook - black, white, two old women, a Cossack boy, coachmen and various courtyards saw him off.

The Bronze Age is a historical and cultural period that replaced the advanced cultural centers Chalcolithic, characterized by the spread of bronze metallurgy, the use of bronze as the main material for the production of tools and weapons. It is customary to limit the Bronze Age chronologically from the end of the fourth millennium BC. before the beginning of the first millennium BC. For individual regions, the dating of the Bronze Age varies significantly, many countries did not know it at all. In the Bronze Age, nomadic cattle breeding and irrigated agriculture, writing, slavery appeared (the Middle East, China, South America). Bronze - an alloy of copper with tin, as well as other metals (lead, arsenic), differs from copper in a lower melting point (700-900 ° C) and greater strength, which led to its distribution in primitive society. The Bronze Age was preceded by the Copper Age, a transitional period from the Stone Age to the use of metals. In turn, the Bronze Age was replaced by the Iron Age.

The Bronze Age as a special degree in the history of mankind was distinguished by the ancient Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Car. The scientific substantiation of the Bronze Age on the basis of archaeological material was given in the first half of the 19th century by Danish scientists K. Thomsen and E. Vorso. In the late 19th - early 20th century, the Swedish archaeologist O. Montelius, using the typological method he created, classified and dated the archaeological sites of the Bronze Age in Europe. A great contribution to the study of the Bronze Age in Europe was made by the French scientist J. Dechelet. At the same time, a comprehensive study of archaeological sites of the Bronze Age began, and archaeological cultures began to stand out. In Russia, in the pre-revolutionary period, archaeologists V.A. Gorodtsov and A. A. Spitsyn identified the main cultures of the Bronze Age in Eastern Europe. In Soviet times, research was conducted in the Caucasus by G.K. Nioradze, E.I. Krupnov, B.A. Kuftin, A.A. Jessen, B.B. Piotrovsky; on the Volga - P.S. Rykov, I.V. Sinitsyn, O.A. Grakov; in the Urals - O.N. Bader, A.P. Smirnov, K.V. Salnikov; in Central Asia - S.P. Tolstov, A.N. Bernshtam, V.M. Mason; in Siberia - S.A. Teploukhov, M.P. Gryaznov, V.N. Chernetsov, S.V. Kiselev, G.P. Sosnovsky, A.P. Okladnikov.

Periodization of the Bronze Age

During the Bronze Age, the formation, development and change of a number of metallurgical provinces took place; distinguish the early, middle and late stages of the Bronze Age. The transition from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age is associated with the collapse of the Balkan-Carpathian metallurgical province (first half of the fourth millennium BC) and the formation of about 35-33 centuries BC. Circumpontian metallurgical province, which dominated throughout the Early and Middle Bronze Age. South of the central folded mountain belt in Eurasia (from the Alps to Altai), in the Bronze Age, societies with a complex social structure, an economy based on agriculture in combination with cattle breeding, cities, writing, and states were formed. To the north, in the steppe regions of Eurasia, societies of pastoral nomads predominated. In the Middle Bronze Age (26th-19th centuries BC), the area of ​​distribution of the metal expanded significantly to the north.
The beginning of the Late Bronze Age is associated with the collapse of the Circumpontian metallurgical province at the turn of the third and second millennia BC. In its place, new metallurgical provinces were formed. The largest of them was the Eurasian steppe metallurgical province. It was adjoined from the south by a relatively small, but distinguished by the richness and variety of products, the nature of alloys, the Caucasian metallurgical province. An Iranian-Afghan metallurgical province has developed in the Middle East. The vast territory from Sayan and Altai to Indochina was occupied by the East Asian metallurgical province. The Mediterranean metallurgical province differed significantly from the European metallurgical province located to the north of it in terms of production methods and product forms. In the 13-12 centuries BC. the so-called catastrophe of the Bronze Age occurred, when cultures disintegrated or changed over a vast area from Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. For a number of centuries until 10-8 centuries BC. e. global migrations of peoples were carried out, the transition to the early Iron Age began. The longest in Europe, the Bronze Age was preserved among the Celtic tribes on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.

The main centers of the spread of bronze

The oldest bronze tools were found in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, in the south of the Iranian Highlands and date back to the fourth millennium BC. e. At the end of the fourth millennium BC. they spread in Egypt, at the end of the third millennium BC. - in India, in the middle of the second millennium BC. e. in China and Europe. Not later than the first millennium BC, centers of bronze casting appeared in Black Africa. The African art of bronze casting reached its heyday in the 11th-17th centuries in the countries of the Guinean coast. In America, the secrets of bronze casting were mastered in Peru during the late Tiwanaku culture (6th-10th century AD).
In the Bronze Age, the uneven historical development of various regions of the Earth was clearly manifested. In the countries of the Near East with a developed manufacturing economy, states were formed in the Bronze Age. The productive economy determined their economic progress, the emergence of large ethnic communities, the beginning of the decomposition of the tribal system. At the same time, in large areas remote from the advanced centers, the Neolithic way of life was preserved, but even here metal tools and weapons penetrated, influencing the development of the population of these regions. Strong exchange ties, especially between areas of metal deposits, contributed to the acceleration of the pace of economic and social development. For Europe, the so-called Amber Route was of great importance, along which amber was exported from the Baltic to the south, and weapons and jewelry were brought to the north.
During the Bronze Age in Asia, the development of urban civilizations in the Near and Middle East continued, new urban civilizations appeared: Harappa in India, Yin and Zhou in China (14-8 centuries BC). At the beginning of the second millennium BC. the agricultural tribes of the southwest of Central Asia developed a proto-urban civilization of the ancient Eastern type (Namazga-tepe 5), which had connections with the cultures of the Iranian Highlands and Harappa. At the turn of the third - second millennium BC. The Caucasus region with its rich ore base became one of the metallurgical centers of Eurasia, supplying the steppe regions of Eastern Europe with copper products. In the third millennium BC. e. Transcaucasia was the area of ​​distribution of sedentary agricultural and pastoral communities - carriers of the Kuro-Arak culture, associated with the ancient culture of the Bronze Age of Asia Minor. From the middle of the third millennium to the end of the second millennium BC. cattle-breeding tribes (Maikop culture, North Caucasian culture) lived in the North Caucasus, leaving rich burial places of leaders.
The original Trialetian culture with painted pottery was widespread in Transcaucasia in the 18th-15th centuries BC. In the second millennium BC. Transcaucasia was the center of bronze metallurgy, similar to the production of the Hittites and Assyria. In the North Caucasus at that time, the North Caucasian culture developed in contact with the Catacomb culture, and in the Western Caucasus - the culture of dolmens. In the second half of the second millennium BC. e. - the beginning of the first millennium BC on the basis of the cultures of the Middle Bronze Age, cultures with a high level of metallurgy are formed: the Central Transcaucasian culture, the Colchis culture (Western Caucasus), the Koban culture (Central Caucasus), the Kuban culture (North-Western Caucasus), the Kayakent-Khorochoevskaya culture (North-Eastern Caucasus).
In Europe, the first centers of statehood appeared on Crete (Knoss, Festus) at the end of the third - second millennium BC. This is evidenced by the remains of cities, palaces, the appearance of writing (21-13 centuries BC). In mainland Greece, a similar process began later, in the 16th-13th centuries BC. there also already existed city-states - royal palaces in Tiryns, Mycenae, Pylos, royal tombs in Mycenae, writing system B, which is considered the oldest Greek letter of the Achaeans. Ancient Greece in the Bronze Age was the advanced center of Europe, a number of cultures of farmers and pastoralists flourished on its territory. In their midst, a process of property and social differentiation took place, as evidenced by the finds of workshops of bronze casters, treasures of treasures of the tribal nobility.
In the countries of the Danube basin in the Bronze Age, the transition to the patriarchal-tribal system was completed. Archaeological cultures of the early Bronze Age (end of the third - beginning of the second millennium BC) were a continuation of earlier Eneolithic cultures of an agricultural nature. At the beginning of the second millennium BC. In Central Europe, the Unetitsky culture spread, characterized by a high level of casting bronze products, and in the 15-13 centuries BC. - the culture of burial mounds. In the second half of the second millennium BC. Lusatian culture appeared (12-4 centuries BC). The vast territory of Central Europe was occupied by the burial field culture (1300-750 BC) characterized by cremations. In Central and Northern Europe at the end of the third and in the first half of the second millennium BC. in several local versions, there was a culture of battle axes (corded ceramics), which received its name from stone drilled axes and cord ornamentation of ceramics. From the beginning of the second millennium BC. the territory from the Iberian Peninsula to the Carpathians was occupied by the culture of bell-shaped goblets. The population that left the monuments of this culture gradually moved from west to east. On the Apennine Peninsula, the Bronze Age is characterized by monuments of the late stage of the Remedello culture. From the middle of the second millennium BC. e. in the north of the peninsula, under the influence of alpine lake pile settlements, the so-called terramaras spread - settlements on piles that were built not over the lake, but on damp floodplains of river valleys in the Po river basin. The Bronze Age on the territory of Western Europe left a large number of mounds with complex burial structures, often of a megalithic type - dolmens, menhirs, cromlechs. The megalithic complex Stonehenge in England is noteworthy; its early structures date back to the 19th century BC. The development of metallurgy is associated with the appearance in the south of the Iberian Peninsula from the end of the third millennium BC. e. developed culture with large settlements surrounded by walls with towers (Los Millares).

Bronze Age in Russia and adjacent countries

In the steppe zone of Eastern Europe at the beginning of the second millennium BC. the tribes of the catacomb culture lived, engaged in pastoral cattle breeding, agriculture, and bronze casting. Along with them lived the tribes of the Yamnaya culture. The development of the Ural metallurgical center led in the middle of the second millennium BC. to the appearance on the basis of the Yamnaya culture of the Srubnaya culture in the Trans-Volga region. The tribes of the Srubnaya culture were armed with bronze "hanging" axes, spears, daggers, they mastered the riding horse, spread in the steppes along both banks of the Volga, and east to the Ural River. The tribes of the Srubnaya culture own the hoards of bronze items, semi-finished products, foundry molds, items made of precious metals. In the first half of the first millennium BC. they were assimilated by their kindred Scythians.
In the 16-15 centuries BC. Komarovskaya culture began to spread in the territory of the Carpathians and Podolia. In the northern regions, it has features characteristic of the more western Trzynec culture. The Volga-Oka interfluve and the Vyatka Trans-Volga region in the second millennium BC. occupied by hunting and fishing tribes of the late Neolithic, among which the tribes of the Fatyanovo culture settled, engaged in cattle breeding and made spherical pottery, stone drilled axes-hammers and copper "pendulous" axes. In the Bronze Age, in the Volga-Oka interfluve and on the Kama, bronze spears, Celts, daggers of the Seima or Turbine type became widespread. Weapons of the Seima type were found in the Borodino (Bessarabian) treasure of the 14th-13th centuries BC. e. (Moldova), in the Urals, on Issyk-Kul, on the Yenisei.
On the Middle Volga, in the Urals, in the Don region, burial mounds and sites of the Abashev culture of the second half of the second millennium BC are located. In the steppes of Western Siberia and Kazakhstan to the Altai and Yenisei from the middle of the second millennium BC. e. inhabited by agricultural and pastoral tribes of the Andronovo culture. In the middle and second half of the second millennium BC. e. The tribes of the Andronovo culture penetrated into Central Asia, created a number of local cultures there, of which the Tazabagyab culture of Khorezm is the most famous. The spread of the steppes may have caused the decline of the agricultural civilization in the southwest of Central Asia (Namazga 6). In the last quarter of the second millennium BC. in Southern Siberia and Altai, bronze tools and weapons of the Karasuk culture spread, and in Transbaikalia - of the tomb culture.

At the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennium BC there was another qualitative transition in the nature-society system, the copper age came, and after about half a millennium - bronze age.

By 3500 B.C. copper was smelted and processed throughout the Mediterranean and much of Europe. Bronze products appeared simultaneously in the space from Spain to Thailand around 3300 BC. Bronze manufacturing technologies appeared synchronously over vast areas.

Modern bronze is an alloy of 85% copper and 15% tin. Almost all bronze before 3000 BC consisted of copper and arsenic (5%). Linguistic analysis shows that the words denoting copper, bronze, lead, arsenic and even iron arose among the peoples who inhabited Asia Minor.

In the Bronze Age, almost the entire spectrum of substances absent in nature appears - non-native metals, ceramics, glass, fabrics. In the entire subsequent history of mankind since that time, only one fundamentally new class of substances has been discovered - plastics. The wheel, which determined the creation of a new type of mobile vehicles and made mass migrations possible, is becoming widespread.

At the same time, the Bronze Age came as the sunset of a magical (magical) human culture, from which everything wonderful disappeared - the perception of the world became more and more pragmatic.

The Dublin History Museum has 1,300 Bronze Age objects and only 30 axes and one copper sword. Tin products were not found at all.

The problem is that in order to smelt bronze, you must first learn about the properties of the alloy of tin and bronze. To learn about the properties of tin, you need to experiment with it. To experiment with tin, it must be brought from somewhere in the Middle East (where bronze appeared), where it does not exist. To bring tin to the Middle East, you need to understand its value, know about its properties and, in general, know that such a metal exists.

It turns out that in the Middle East they were aware of tin, and since practically no tin products were found, the ancient metallurgists understood that tin only makes sense in an alloy with copper. From this it can be concluded that