Degtyareva A.D. To a Problem of Genesis of Metal Working in the Sintashta and Petrovka Cultures of South Ural

Abstract: Today there is need for a comparison of materials on morphology, the chemical composition, manufacturing techniques of an inventory complex of non-ferrous metals of cultures in connection with domination of the point of view about successive development between tribes of Sintashta and Petrovka Cultures has ripened. The obtained analytical data on metalproduction of cultures conflict to the statement about the Sintashta sources of Petrovka metalproduction. Collected data disprove this assumption and give the chance to connect development of metalproduction at a boundary of average-late bronze with several lines of development of processing of non-ferrous metal in a Yamna-poltavka and catacomb communities. The article’s conclusions are based on the mass results derived from the atomic emission spectroscopy (at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), X-ray fluorescence (at the Institute of Archaeology at the Russian Academy of Sciences) (405 products) and metallographic (at the Institute for the Study of the Northern Expansion at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 320 products) analyses.The morphological review of metal collections of the beginning of a late bronze age in the territory from Don to Ishim shows use of identical instruments of labor not only at the Sintashta and Petrovka tribes, and in much wider area of a steppe and forest-steppe strip of Eastern Europe, the Urals, Kazakhstan that is explainable from the point of view of emergence of epoch-making standard stereotypes of metalproduction of the West Asian province going the sources to the previous Yamna-poltavka and catacomb periods of early and average bronze. Features of technological traditions of Sintashta and Petrovka production are quite explainable the previous trends of development of metalproduction during of early and average bronze. In Sintashta Culture orientation to production traditions of steppe Yamna-poltavka and catacomb tribes of Northern Black Sea and Ciscaucasia in the use of predominantly low-alloy arsenic bronzes under the domination of the forging technique that uses low-temperature metal working.Petrovka blacksmiths, similar to Don-Volga Abashevo masters, continued the stable tradition of the Ural Yamna-Poltavka blacksmiths of handling pure copper, including oxidised copper with the use of casting and forging techniques.

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