Traditions of creating the form and ornamentation of the pottery vessels of the Alakul Culture in the Alakul burial ground (a case study for the burial mounds 1 and 14)

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of the analysis of the form and ornamentation of the pottery vessels of the Late Bronze Age Alakul Culture from the burial mounds 1 and 14 of the Alakul burial ground (the Trans-Urals). The study was carried out within the framework of the historical-cultural approach developed by A.A. Bobrinsky. The work is aimed at the identification of pottery-making traditions of creating the form and ornamentation of pottery vessels amongst the population who built the burial mounds 1 and 14. In the result of the analysis, there has been identified the cultural core of the traditions of the form-making of the pottery vessels in the population who built the burial mounds 1 and 14. The vessels are primarily of medium proportions and quinquepartite structure — ‘lip + neck + brachium + body + base’. Also, the dominant parameters of the functional parts ap-peared to be similar amongst the vessels from the different burial mounds. These data indicate relatively high uniformity of the composition of the consumers of the ware. The study of the ornamentation revealed that smooth stamp, which was used in the techniques of stamping and drawing, served as a traditional tool for the application of ornament. Toothed stamp was less fre-quently used in the techniques of stamping and drawing. The main ornamental elements were a ‘short straight line’ and a ‘long straight line’. Twenty two ornamental patterns have been identified; the widespread ones were the ‘horizontal zigzag, ‘horizontal straight line’, ‘cross-hatched isosceles triangle with point upwards’, and ‘cross-hatched isosceles triangle with point downwards’. Most of the identified leading and infrequent ornamental patterns functioned as a main motif. In the complementary motif, the widespread one was the pattern ‘horizontal straight line’. In the composition of the ornament, traditional was the placement of the ornamental motifs in the upper part of the neck and on the upper and lower parts of the body, with the allocation of a “free band” in the lower part of the neck and brachium. In the result of the correlation of the obtained data on the pottery vessels from the burial mounds 1 and 14, certain dissimilarities have been noted. In the burial mound 14, a large quantity of the vessels have a relatively higher neck; the vessels with the lowest index of the proportionality and the slope angle of the body are also present; in the ornamentation, toothed stamp was employed more frequently in the technique of drawing, which was used to apply only ‘horizontal zigzag’ and ‘horizontal straight lines’ patterns. The correlation of the data on the form and ornamentation of the ves-sels for the burial mounds 1 and 14 revealed that toothed stamp in the technique of drawing was used to apply ornaments mainly to the vessels with lower indices of proportionality and angel of the body. A hypothesis has been put forward on the in-creasing complexity of the composition of the studied group of the Alakul Culture population during the period of construction of the burial mound 14, which may explain the noted nonuniformity of the pottery-making skills.