scholarly journals Calendar Age of the Baigetobe Kurgan from the Iron Age Saka Cemetery in Shilikty Valley, Kazakhstan

Radiocarbon ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina P Panyushkina ◽  
Igor Y Slyusarenko ◽  
Renato Sala ◽  
Jean-Marc Deom ◽  
Abdesh T Toleubayev
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Tree Ring ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Tree Ring Chronology ◽  
Burial Site ◽  
Archaeological Wood ◽  
The North ◽  
Burial Rites

AbstractThis study addresses the development of an absolute chronology for prominent burial sites of Inner Asian nomadic cultures. We investigate Saka archaeological wood from a well-known gold-filled Baigetobe kurgan (burial mound #1 of Shilikty-3 cemetery) to estimate its calendar age using tree-ring and 14C dating. The Saka was the southernmost tribal group of Asian Scythians, who roamed Central Asia during the 1st millennium BC (Iron Age). The Shilikty is a large burial site located in the Altai Mountains along the border between Kazakhstan and China. We present a new floating tree-ring chronology of larch and five new 14C dates from the construction timbers of the Baigetobe kurgan. The results of Bayesian modeling suggest the age of studied timbers is ~730–690 cal BC. This places the kurgan in early Scythian time and authenticates a previously suggested age of the Baigetobe gold collection between the 8th and 7th centuries BC derived from the typology of grave goods and burial rites. Chronologically and stylistically, the Scythian Animal Style gold from the Baigetobe kurgan is closer to Early Scythians in the North Caucasus and Tuva than to the local Saka occurrences in the Kazakh Altai. Our dating results indicate that the Baigetobe kurgan was nearly contemporaneous to the Arjan-2 kurgan (Tuva) and could be one of the earliest kurgans of the Saka-Scythian elite in Central Asia.

scholarly journals COULD THE PERSONS BURIED IN PEREPIATIKHA BARROW BE THE LORDS OF THE HILLFORD OF KHOTIV?

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-75
Author(s):  
E. A. Kravchenko
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Steppe Zone ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Local Material ◽  
Bronze Mirrors

North-West side of Forrest-Steppe zone had no high activity in historical events of the beginning of Iron Age, so the material culture of sites of these territories have had no sharp chronological rappers. They took places in aristocratic complexes just with appearance of Scythian in Middle Dnieper region. The article deals with two brilliant sites dating to the Early Scythian time — hillford of Khotiv and Perepiatikha burial mound. How is traditional and innovative on these sits divided? The antiquities of the previous period in Central and Eastern Europe became a conservative feature in the local material culture. This is a way of building and building materials, bi-ritual burial ceremony, hand-made pottery, prestigious personal metal things of the Thracian-Illyrian type, bronze details of a traditional costume, metal and stone tools, stone dishes and crackers. Innovation is divided into several categories. The first is the technology of fortification, which was appeared in placement of defense from the cavalry, and not only from the archers, and the emergence of new types of arrows — so called Scythian, which in fact became a forced import. In other words, innovation in technology relates to the sphere of warfare. The second category is import. Early imports are associated with the antiquities of the North Caucasus, the Middle East and Asia Minor (Khotiv’s predator, griffins from Perepiatikha, bronze mirrors, geshire and paste beads), which can be called jewelry and toilet items on the whole, that is, luxury items. Late imports connected with Greek policies. These are amphorae — containers of wine or other products, willing fineware and cooking pottery, which in general can be called consumer goods. Both types of innovation are generally associated with adoption or inventing, as well as getting through trade of new things or technologies that are not associated with the massive migration of carriers of innovation features. At the same time, traditional features show that the ethnic characteristics of the population of the region are not unchanged at the time of being of both sits — hillfort of Khotiv and the funeral complex of Perepiatikha.

The northern Black Sea and North Caucasus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valenina Mordvinceva ◽  
Sabine Reinhold
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
The North ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Northern Shore ◽  
Greek Colonization

This chapter surveys the Iron Age in the region extending from the western Black Sea to the North Caucasus. As in many parts of Europe, this was the first period in which written sources named peoples, places, and historical events. The Black Sea saw Greek colonization from the seventh century BC and its northern shore later became the homeland of the important Bosporan kingdom. For a long time, researchers sought to identify tribes named by authors such as Herodotus by archaeological means, but this ethno-deterministic perspective has come under critique. Publication of important new data from across the region now permits us to draw a more coherent picture of successive cultures and of interactions between different parts of this vast area, shedding new light both on local histories and on the role ‘The East’ played in the history of Iron Age Europe.

scholarly journals Early Iron Age Sword from the Territory of the Middle Yenisei

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 135-143
Author(s):  
Oleg A. Mitko ◽  
Sergey G. Skobelev
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Low Carbon Steel ◽  
Morphological Characteristics ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Group Iii ◽  
The North ◽  
Minusinsk Basin

Purpose. The article is devoted to the characteristics of a double-edged iron sword, which can be attributed to the unique phenomena of the early Iron Age of the Minusinsk Basin. Results. According to its morphological characteristics, the sword is an increased technological modification of the traditional Tagar dagger. The total length of the sword is 59.5 cm; the width of the lenticular blade in cross-section is about 7 cm. The handle with a volute-like pommel is separated from the blade by a narrow butterfly-shaped crosshair. The length of the hilt is 8 cm, which corresponds to the size of the hilts of most Scythian swords. This is a very small size, since in men the average palm width is about 12 cm. Probably, the rounded outlines of the pommel and narrow crosshairs allow, due to their shape, to hold the short handle of a heavy sword more tightly. Conclusion. According to the classification of O. I. Kura, Scythian swords with a narrow butterfly-shaped crosshair and volute-like pommel are included in Group III, Type II A2 dating from the end of the 5th – 4th centuries BC, which corresponds to the boundary between the Podgorny and Saragashen stages of the Tagar culture. The earliest form of sword hilts with typologically similar forms of crosshairs (kidney-shaped, heart-shaped, butterfly-shaped) with bar-shaped pommels appeared in the North Caucasus in the first half of the 7th century BC. On the territory of the Minusinsk Basin, most morphologically similar daggers are usually dated to the 6th – 4th centuries BC. Before the discovery of the Krasnoyarsk sword, long-bladed iron weapons were not known there. At the same time, swords of the Scythian time were found in the nearest regions of Altai and Kazakhstan. The later appearance of the technology for processing iron in the Minusinsk Basin makes it possible to consider the Krasnoyarsk sword an import item. According to another hypothesis, it belongs to the period of the late 3rd – 2nd centuries BC, when local craftsmen mastered the processing of iron and began to make massive quantities of weapons and tools from low-carbon steel. In doing so, they copied traditional archaic forms.

scholarly journals Large tare vessels of the bronze age Turganic settlement in Orenburg Region

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 91-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalya Petrovna Salugina ◽  
Nina Leonidovna Morgunova ◽  
Mihail Aleksandrovich Turetskii
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Orenburg Region ◽  
The North ◽  
Type Selection ◽  
Large Size ◽  
Culture Formation ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

In the ceramic collection of Turganic settlement in the Orenburg region there is a group of bronze age pottery, which by its morphological and technological indicators stands out sharply from the main group of dishes. They are large size vessels with massive aureoles and distended body. The authors called these vessels hums. The aim of this study is to identify cultural-chronological position of the specified group of dishes in the system of the antiquities of the early - middle bronze age. Within this group the authors distinguish two types. The basis for type selection was the particular design of the upper part of the vessel. The first type is ceramics from Turganic settlement and the vessel from the burial mound Perevolotsky I. Morphological and technological features, and a series of radiocarbon dates has allowed to date these vessels to the time of the yamnaya culture formation in the Volga-Ural region (Repinsky stage). The authors suggest that the appearance of such vessels should be an imitation of the Maikop pottery. It could be penetration of small groups of craftsmen or the intensification of contacts with the population of the North Caucasus. The second type of pottery from Turganic settlement is similar to the burial mound Kardailovsky I (mound 1, burial 3) in Orenburg region, in the Northern pre-Caspian, region of the Samara river, Kuban and the Dnieper. Researchers have noted the scarcity and originality of this dish. The chronological and cultural position of such vessels is determined within the III Millennium BC (calibrated values).

scholarly journals An 854-Year Tree-Ring Chronology of Scots Pine for South-West Finland

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuli Helama ◽  
Jari Holopainen ◽  
Mauri Timonen ◽  
Kari Mielikäinen
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Ring Width ◽  
Summer Precipitation ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Early Summer ◽  
The South ◽  
Tree Ring Chronology ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
The North Atlantic Oscillation

Abstract A near-millennial tree-ring chronology (AD 1147-2000) is presented for south-west Finland and analyzed using dendroclimatic methods. This is a composite chronology comprising samples both from standing pine trees (Pinus sylvestris L.) and subfossil trunks as recovered from the lake sediments, with a total sample size of 189 tree-ring sample series. The series were dendrochronologically cross-dated to exact calendar years to portray variability in tree-ring widths on inter-annual and longer scales. Al though the studied chronology correlates statistically significantly with other long tree-ring width chronologies from Finland over their common period (AD 1520-1993), the south-west chronology did not exhibit similarly strong mid-summer temperature or spring/early-summer precipitation signals in comparison to published chronologies. On the other hand, the south-west chronology showed highest correlations to the North Atlantic Oscillation indices in winter/spring months, this association following a dendroclimatic feature common to pine chronologies over the region and adjacent areas. Paleoclimatic comparison showed that tree-rings had varied similarly to central European spring temperatures. It is postulated that the collected and dated tree-ring material could be studied for wood surface reflectance (blue channel light intensity) and stable isotopes, which both have recently shown to correlate notably well with summer temperatures.

scholarly journals Juniper Tree-Ring Data from the Kuramin Range (Northern Tajikistan) Reveals Changing Summer Drought Signals in Western Central Asia

Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Chen ◽  
Tongwen Zhang ◽  
Andrea Seim ◽  
Shulong Yu ◽  
Ruibo Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Tree Ring ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Severity Index ◽  
Drought Severity ◽  
Summer Drought ◽  
Tree Ring Chronology ◽  
Tree Ring Data ◽  
June July

Coniferous forests cover the mountains in many parts of Central Asia and provide large potentials for dendroclimatic studies of past climate variability. However, to date, only a few tree-ring based climate reconstructions exist from this region. Here, we present a regional tree-ring chronology from the moisture-sensitive Zeravshan juniper (Juniperus seravschanica Kom.) from the Kuramin Range (Tajikistan) in western Central Asia, which is used to reveal past summer drought variability from 1650 to 2015 Common Era (CE). The chronology accounts for 40.5% of the variance of the June–July self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI) during the instrumental period (1901 to 2012). Seven dry periods, including 1659–1696, 1705–1722, 1731–1741, 1758–1790, 1800–1842, 1860–1875, and 1931–1987, and five wet periods, including 1742–1752, 1843–1859, 1876–1913, 1921–1930, and 1988–2015, were identified. Good agreements between drought records from western and eastern Central Asia suggest that the PDSI records retain common drought signals and capture the regional dry/wet periods of Central Asia. Moreover, the spectral analysis indicates the existence of centennial (128 years), decadal (24.3 and 11.4 years), and interannual (8.0, 3.6, 2.9, and 2.0 years) cycles, which may be linked with climate forces, such as solar activity and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The analysis between the scPDSI reconstruction and large-scale atmospheric circulations during the reconstructed extreme dry and wet years can provide information about the linkages of extremes in our scPDSI record with the large-scale ocean–atmosphere–land circulation systems.

scholarly journals Application of Image Analysis for the Identification of Prehistoric Ceramic Production Technologies in the North Caucasus (Russia, Bronze/Iron Age)

Heritage ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 2327-2342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ki Suk Park ◽  
Ralf Milke ◽  
Erik Rybacki ◽  
Sabine Reinhold
Keyword(s):  
Image Analysis ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Polarized Light ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Ceramic Production ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Archaeological Ceramics ◽  
The North ◽  
Production Technologies

The recent advances in microscopy and scanning techniques enabled the image analysis of archaeological objects in a high resolution. From the direct measurements in images, shapes and related parameters of the structural elements of interest can be derived. In this study, image analysis in 2D/3D is applied to archaeological ceramics, in order to obtain clues about the ceramic pastes, firing and shaping techniques. Images were acquired by the polarized light microscope, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and 3D micro X-ray computed tomography (µ-CT) and segmented using Matlab. 70 ceramic sherds excavated at Ransyrt 1 (Middle-Late Bronze Age) and Kabardinka 2 (late Bronze–early Iron Age), located in in the North Caucasian mountains, Russia, were investigated. The size distribution, circularity and sphericity of sand grains in the ceramics show site specific difference as well as variations within a site. The sphericity, surface area, volume and Euler characteristic of pores show the existence of various pyrometamorphic states between the ceramics and within a ceramic. Using alignments of pores and grains, similar pottery shaping techniques are identified for both sites. These results show that the image analysis of archaeological ceramics can provide detailed information about the prehistoric ceramic production technologies with fast data availability.

Communities of the dead

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Harding
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Burial Ground ◽  
Burial Site ◽  
North West ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
The North ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Burial Grounds

Burial monuments of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, individual or in cemeteries, were often located in topographically prominent positions, or in zones of concentration that might qualify as ‘sacred landscapes’. In the Iron Age by contrast it is not obvious what governed the choice of location for cemeteries and smaller burial grounds, whether they were sited in relationship to settlement or whether there were traditional locations dedicated to burial. For some of the eastern Yorkshire square-ditched barrow cemeteries Bevan (1999: 137–8) considered proximity to water may have been a factor. Dent (1982: 450) stressed the siting of Arras type barrows and cemeteries adjacent to linear boundaries and trackways, a factor that is very apparent in the linear spread at Wetwang Slack. Though we may distinguish burials that are integrated into settlements from those that are segregated into cemeteries, therefore, there is no implication that cemeteries were remote from settlements. In fact, the contrary is often demonstrably the case. There is some evidence that small cemeteries or burial grounds were located immediately beyond the enclosure earthworks of hillforts. At Maiden Castle, Dorset (Fig. 3.1; Wheeler, 1943), the picture is prejudiced by the dominance of the ‘war cemetery’ in the eastern entrance, but the reality is that there had been a burial ground just outside the ramparts well before the conquest. A possible parallel is Battlesbury, where Mrs Cunnington (1924: 373) recorded the discovery of human skeletons from time to time in a chalk quarry just outside the north-west entrance to the camp. Some of these were contracted inhumations, and apparently included one instance of an adult and child buried together. The attribution of a ‘war cemetery’ (Pugh and Crittall, 1957: 118 evidently refers to this external burial site, which should be distinguished from the burials excavated more than a century earlier by William Cunnington within the hillfort at its north-west end (Colt Hoare, 1812: 69). Iron Age inhumations were also found, just within the rampart circuit, at Grimthorpe in Yorkshire (Mortimer, 1905: 150–2; Stead, 1968: 166–73). One of these was the well-known warrior burial, found in 1868.

Dendrochronology of the English Neolithic

Antiquity ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 64 (243) ◽  
pp. 210-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Hillam ◽  
C. M. Groves ◽  
D. M. Brown ◽  
M. G. L. Baillie ◽  
J. M. Coles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Tree Ring Chronology ◽  
Historic Period ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Oak Tree ◽  
Site Chronology ◽  
A Site ◽  
Very High

In the period 1970–85, tree-ring research in Europe had resulted in the production of long oak chronologies for both Ireland and Germany going back over 7000 years (e.g. Brown et al. 1986; Leuschner & Delorme 1984). In England, there was a network of regional chronologies covering the historic period, and almost no chronological coverage for the prehistoric. For the archaeologist this meant that, provided a site from the historic period produced a replicated site chronology, the chances of dating by dendrochronology were very high. The chances of this happening for a prehistoric site were poor by comparison, although some sites were successfully dated, for example the Iron Age causeway from Fiskerton in Liricolnshire and the Hasholme log boat found in North Humberside (Hillam 1987).The period 1985–88 saw an intense effort to outline a prehistoric oak tree-ring chronology in England (Baillie & Brown 1988). This work centred on sub-fossil oaks from East Anglia and Lancashire and built on a previous chronology from Swan Carr, near Durham which spanned 1155–381 BC (Baillie et al. 1983). The approach to chronology-building was to produce wellreplicated chronology units which could be located precisely in time against the existing Irish (Pilcher et al. 1984) and North German (Leuschner & Delorme 1984) chronologies.

Redox-thermal behavior of archaeological ceramics from the North Caucasus (Russia, Bronze/Iron Age)

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 2207-2221
Author(s):  
Ki Suk Park ◽  
Ulrich Schade ◽  
Johannes C. Vrijmoed ◽  
Sabine Reinhold ◽  
Ralf Milke
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Behavior ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Archaeological Ceramics ◽  
The North
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