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Humanitarian sciences in Siberia

2017 year, number

BRONZE PLAQUES OF URILSKAYA CULTURE IN THE FORM OF PAWS OF WESTERN PRIAMURIE

S.P. Nesterov
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS, Lavrentieva ave., 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia
Keywords: Urilskaya culture, early Iron Age, bronze plaques in the form of paws

Abstract

The beginning of the early Iron Age in the Amur area is associated with the origin of Urilsk archeological culture (XII-II centuries BC). Studies have shown that that its bearers representing a symbiosis of the tribes in this region were migrants who lived in western and south-western Manchuria and Inner Mongolia of China at the end of II thousand BC. Two plaques in the form of paws are known among very few bronze ornaments of the Urilskaya culture in Priamurie. One plaque was found in 1961 at the Urilsky island on the Amur river, and later was «lost» until 2017, accidentally placed into a collection of the Ango site from the Zeya river. Another plaque was found in 1997 at the Bukinski Kluch-1 site on the Bureya river. For these plaques are common signs of a sub-triangular shape, the bulge outwards, a linear type of ornament on the front side, the presence of broken loops for hanging on a smooth reverse side, which were inherent in the original things and served as a model to create matrices. Equally the problem of a new fastening device has been solved. After plaques loops for hanging have been broken pair horizontal holes in the plate were made. In this form plaques were used in one case, as a stripe, in the second one - as a suspension. These ornaments are copies of two typologically similar plaques. The technology of plaques production applying a print of original things in the plastic form was similar. The plaques in the form of paws were widespread during Karasuk era in Siberia, Central Asia and North China at the end of II - early I millennium BC. Archaeological materials, stratigraphic data of Suchie Protoki-2 and Bukinski Kluch-1 sites, where in the layers with Urilsk culture ceramics bronze and iron objects of Karasuk appearance were found, as well as radiocarbon dates allow us to date the bronze plaques in the form of paws by the initial stage of forming the Urilsk archeological culture in Priamurie.