The Horse Bridle of the Middle Bronze Age in the East European Forest-Steppe and the Steppe

Abstract

Associated with the final stage of the Middle Bronze Age in the Eurasian forest-steppe and steppe is the widespread incidence of evidence of the mass use of the horse as a draft animal—cheekpieces.a The first summary of Bronze Age cheekpieces, published by K. F. Smirnov, referred to the Volga—Ural region and opened with cheekpieces made of a bone split in half (Smirnov 1961). The researcher's analogies and questions took this work beyond the confines of the usual publications of archeological material, and the cheekpieces themselves have been attracting the close attention of researchers on the Bronze Age ever since. They have become a reliable subject of typological constructions and discussions, augmented by ever newer finds. It is enough to say that in the work of V. S. Gorbunov, over twenty places where cheekpieces have been found have been recorded from monuments of the Volga-Ural region alone (Gorbunov 1992, pp. 136-38, 188, 189). A recent survey by E. E. Kuz'mina (far from complete at the time of publication) records over sixty Bronze Age monuments and locations in the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe with over one hundred finds (Kuz'mina 1994, pp. 171-88). The typological scheme of Iu. V. Goncharova, which appeared two years later and unfortunately contains a number of inaccuracies, lists over seventy examples of disk-shaped cheekpieces with spikes alone from thirty-nine monuments (Goncharova 1996).