Hiatus III в. до н.э. и incident 1963 г.

Abstract

In 1963 K.F.Smirnov, V.G.Petrenko, and M.G.Moshkova published two collections of archaeological sources on the Sauromatian culture and the Early Sarmatian (Prokhorovka) culture. At the same time these researchers made a methodological error: using a single archaeological database (card index of monuments), they selected for their publications seventy archaeological complexes and finds, which were both as the latest Sauromatian monuments and as the earliest Sarmatian (Prokhorovka) monuments at the same time. Since the collections of sources were published by category of finds, and not by complexes, the allowed mistake was missed by the authors of the collections when they were preparing the books for publication. And this duplication of materials became a foundation for a system of evidence for the smooth transition of the Sauromatian culture to the Early Sarmatian. When the authors realized this after the books had been published, they decided not to focus on the error believing that the intensive growth of new archaeological material would quickly alleviate the error. However, all the decades after the 1963 incident never gathered sufficient the materi- als of the 3rd century BC. The thesis about the 2nd–1st centuries BC Sarmatian culture ‘growing’ out of the late Sauromatian monuments dated 4th–3rd centuries BC appeared to be rather a declarative statement without any evidence behind. Attempts to statistically analyze large sets of funeral rite signs at sites dated 6th–1st centuries BC in Asian Sarmatia did not give the expected result due to the methodological inconsistency of the study. In addition, the so-called ‘clamped dating method’ is methodologically questionable and anti-historical because the continuity of 6th–4th centuries BC culture and 2nd–1st centuries BC culture is not proven, even though the method was developed by V.M.Klepikov specifically for identifying monuments of the 3rd century BC. All the events considered in the article led Sarmatian archeology to a crisis and to ascertaining the presence of a hiatus in chronological columns for antiquities assigned to the Scythian-Sarmatian type in the Southern Urals and the Lower Volga region.