Natalia P. Matveeva
Tyumen State University, Russia (nataliamatveeva1703@yandex.ru)
Keywords: Western Siberia, steppe-forest area, Early Iron Age, Sargatka culture, radiocarbon dating.

The paper discusses the dating of the lower and upper chronological boundaries of the Early Iron Age Sargatka culture in the Western Siberia steppe-forest area. A compendium of radiocarbon dates from 118 sites, i.e. heterochronous dwellings from seven settlements and burials from 15 barrow cemeteries, is being published. The author recognizes a spatially and qualitatively uneven degree of the study of sources, among which the materials on the Tobol valley prevail. It is established that the culture genesis under the influence of the invasion of the Saka and Sarmatian nomads took a relatively long time, i.e. about a century, and its dispersion in the north and south was separated in time by about fifty years. The chronology evaluated previously from archaeological dates of types of artefacts is supported by radiocarbon dates from type-sites. The life time of the Sargatka culture between the early 5th century BC and the first half of the 4th century AD is substantiated. Evidence of active exploitation of the steppe-forest area by the Sargatka population dates mainly to the 4th century BC–1st century AD. It is supposed that in the early period the Sargatka population coexisted with the bearers of the Gorokhovo and Baitovo cultures and gradually supplanted them, partially by assimilation and partially by forceful ousting. In the final period in the 2nd–4th centuries AD as a result of invasions of the Kulayka taiga migrants and southern Hunnic groups a relative socio-economic centralization was upset and a new cultural genesis on the basis of several substrate and superstrate constituents began. It is possible that in the 2nd–3rd centuries AD the Sargatka population lost parts of its southern territories yet more representative samples of radiocarbon dates are needed to settle this issue.