Sergey F. Koksharov*, Mikhail Yu. Baranov**
*The Institute of History and Archaeology, the Urals Branch, RAS, Ekaterinburg, Russia (serg.koksharov@mail.ru)
**Research and Production Association“Northern Archaeology‑1”Ltd, Nefteyugansk, Russia (baranovm73@inbox.ru)

Keywords: Bronze Age, casting mould, matrix, pouring gate/sprue, nozzle, Varpaul pottery, Kulyogan pottery, Polymyat pottery, settlement, radiocarbon dates.

This paper examines metalworking remains from the Bronze Age habitation site Balinskoe 1 in the taiga zone of the Ob basin in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District – Yugra of the Tyumen oblast. Those include fragments of two matrices and a ceramic nozzle. Graphic reconstructions of finds reflect characteristic traits of the production of the taiga craftsmen. Lamellar artefacts resembling those from the Abashevo, Turbino, Sintashta and Petrovskoye sites of the beginning of the Late Bronze Age were cast in closed moulds consisting, judging from analogies, of matrices and lids. The published materials form a single complex with domestic pottery of the Balinskoe 1 settlement comparable to Kulyogan and late Polymyat ware from the Surgut area of the Ob valley and the basin of the Konda River. Some of Kulyogan, late Polymyat and Balinskoe vessels were moulded over template pots in keeping with Sintashta and Petrovka techniques, which is believed to imply the contemporaneity of the said cultures. According to a typological-historical sequence elaborated for sites of the taiga zone of the Ob-Irtysh basin, those of Kulyogan and late Polymyat are dated to the pre-Seima period of the Late Bronze Age. They predate complexes with Varpaul-type pottery accompanied by moulds of celts of Seima-Turbino and Samus’-Kizhirovo types and isolated artefacts of Andronovo outlook (Satyga XVI cemetery and Saigatino VI ritual site). The archaeological context contradicts calibrated 14C dates showing the contemporaneity of antiquities of the pre-Seima and Seima horizons and enabling to date these to the late 3rd millennium BC. The authors hold that casting of lamellar articles in duplex moulds consisting of matrices and lids takes shape in the north of Western Siberia in the pre-Seima time, i.e. in the first third of the 2nd millennium BC, not involving the Seima-Turbino and Andronovo populations, and survives there throughout the Bronze Age.