Metals from the ritual site of Shaitanskoye Ozero II (Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia)

Olga Nikolaevna Korochkova,Yuri Borisovich Serikov,Vladimir Ivanovich Stefanov,Serguei Vladimirovich Kuzminykh

doi:10.3989/tp.2010.10052

Abstract

The present article describes materials from the ritual site of Shaitanskoye Ozero II, Sverdlovsk Oblast. Few excavations carried out at the site measuring less than 240 sq. m in size, yielded more than 160 bronze artifacts: utensils, weapons, rolled copper ornaments, and abundant smelting and casting waste. Apart from Seima-Turbino (celts and laminar knives) and Eurasian types (daggers with cast hilts, truncated knives with guards, fluted bracelets and rings), several metal artifacts were revealed manufactured in the style of the Samus-Kizhirovo tradition. Bronze artifacts, stone knives and scrapers, and numerous arrowheads are accompanied by ceramics of the Koptyaki type. Metals use mainly a copper-tin alloy. This assemblage is shown to be relevant to the local tradition of metalworking, which, in this particular region, was comparatively ancient having been left uninterrupted by the rapid migrations of the Seima-Turbino people. In addition, the assemblage indicates the sources from which post-Seima artifacts reached the Alakul people. These artifacts may also have been linked with a large metalworking center located in the Middle Urals.

Highlights

The Seima-Turbino type metal assemblage is distinct in terms of technology, morphology, and alloy
Most Seima-Turbino bronzes have been found at large cemeteries such as Preobrazhenka-6, Rostovka, Satyga, Turbino, Ust-Vetluga, Seima, and Reshnoye; at small cemeteries and sites which are tentatively described as cemeteries (Verkhnyaya Mulga, Yelunino I, Tsygankova Sopka, Sopka-2, Bor-Lionva, UstGaiva, Murzikha-1, Sokolovka, Nikolskoye, and Hangaskankaala near Oulu, Finland); and ritual sites (Kaninskaya Cave and the Galich “hoard”) in the forest-steppe and taiga regions of Western Siberian and the Russian Plains (Fig. 1)
While the study of the Shaitanskoye Ozero II ritual site was initiated relatively recently, the results strongly suggest that the site is highly relevant to the Late Northern Eurasian Bronze Age and that the mountain-forest Urals were a part of the Eurasian Metallurgical Province