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

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.

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Reinhold

Ornaments, jewellery, personal equipment and weapons in graves can be defined as relicts of ancient costumes and weapon assemblages which are connected to the social identities of the buried persons. At several late Bronze Age and early Iron Age sites in the north Caucasus (Koban culture) large numbers of richly furnished graves allow the reconstruction of specific costume and armour groups. These can be related to factors which structured these communities into a ranked society. This article is based on the investigation of two cemeteries in Chechenia (north-eastern Caucasus) which demonstrate the change in social differentiation during the developed Iron Age. The article also includes a general discussion about the concepts of costumes and their potential for reconstructing social identities.


Author(s):  
Corina Knipper ◽  
Sabine Reinhold ◽  
Julia Gresky ◽  
Andrej Belinskiy ◽  
Kurt W. Alt

Author(s):  
Valenina Mordvinceva ◽  
Sabine Reinhold

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.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 178-188
Author(s):  
Yueying Shan

Abstract Through the systematic trimming and analysis to the remains of the archaeological cultures of the Eastern Zhou Period through the Qin Dynasty in northern China, this paper puts forward that during this period, there were two cultural zones (the north and south cultural “belts”) with clearly different cultural features and connotations and peoples bearing clearly different physical characteristics in northern China, and discussed the regional differences of the remains of the archaeological cultures in each cultural belt and their developments and changes. The cultures in the south cultural belt could not be regarded as a part of the early Iron Age cultures in the Eurasian Steppes, but a kind of culture peculiar to the transitional zone between the cultures in the Eurasian Steppes and that in the Central Plains; the development and evolution of the north cultural belt, which emerged in the mid to the late Spring-and-Autumn Period, can be divided into three clear phases: the first phase was a part of the early Iron Age cultures in the Eurasian Steppes, but since the second phase, the cultural features and connotations of this belt began to stray out of the cultures in the Eurasian Steppes, which would be closely related to the military conquering and political management of the Central Plains polities and the powerful northward advance of the cultures of the Central Plains. Referring to the relevant historic literature, this paper made further observations to the interactions among the polities of the Central Plains and the peoples in these two cultural belts and the changes of the cultural patterns in each of the two cultural belts, and revealed the processes of the Sinicization of the Rong, Di and Hu ethnic groups in northern China. This paper pointed out that the Hu ethnic group lived in northern China since the mid Spring-and-Autumn Period, and the later appearance of the Hu people in the historic literatures was related to the northward advances of the territories of polities of the Central Plains rather than the southward invasion of the nomadic tribes living in the present-day Mongolian Plateau.


Archaeologia ◽  
1922 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
E. C. R. Armstrong

A classification of the numerous bronze pins found in Ireland is to be desired. Wilde, who figured over thirty specimens of various kinds, made no separation between Bronze and Early Iron Age pins and those of the Christian period. Coffey devoted some pages to pins, reproducing a number of Wilde's illustrations; he did not, however, attempt any classification, merely stating that, with the exception of the ‘hand-type’ and other pins of that class showing decoration earlier than the interlaced style, the approximate date of the majority might be taken as the tenth to the eleventh century.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina P Panyushkina ◽  
Igor Y Slyusarenko ◽  
Renato Sala ◽  
Jean-Marc Deom ◽  
Abdesh T Toleubayev

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.


Antiquity ◽  
1928 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 189-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Einar Gjerstad

The Swedish archaeological expedition in Cyprus worked last year at Lapithos on the north and at Karavostassi, the ancient Soli, on the north-west.At Lapithos 23 tombs from the early and middle Copper Age and zo tombs from the early Iron Age were opened and examined. The former cover a period from the end of early Cypriote I to the beginning of middle Cypriote 11. The main part of the finds consists of a very representative series of pottery : red polished I-IV ware, black polished ware, black slip 1-11 ware, white painted I-IV ware. The later tombs have yielded a rich collection of tools and weapons, bracelets and rings of copper, finger-rings of silver and gold, 8 necklaces of paste beads, idols of terra cotta and one marble idol, etc. The gold rings (early Cypriote III) represent the first gold found in Cvprus of the early Copper Age. One necklace (early Cypriote III), coniists of 156 globular beads of various sizes arranged in 8 rhythmic series, with one large bead in the middle of each series. Another necklace (middle Cypriote I) consists of 64 large globular beads and more than 500 small cylindrical beads inserted between the large ones. A third is of round, fluted and double-conical beads in symmetrical arrangement. The idols are of the plank-shaped type. One represents a mother holding a baby in her arms, another a mother and a baby in a bed, and a third a man and a woman in a bed.


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