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a large amount of copper ore, slag, and tools used for metallurgical purposes.
Metallurgy in the southern Urals flourished and the traveling smiths copiously
supplied the whole lower and middle Volga basin with copper ornaments, tools,
and
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weapons. The people now produced not only axes, spearheads, awls, and spirals of
copper, but also daggers, knives, sickles, bracelets, and quite complicated
ornaments such as pendants, rings, and belts made of copper or silver foil with
minutely embossed designs of rosette, concentric circle, and leaf patterns.
Excellent craftsmanship characterizes the detailed ornamentation with thin copper
wire and copper foil sewn on leather. Fragments of preserved pieces of headgear,
sleeves, and shoulder trappings of leather are richly decorated with lines of tiny
copper rings, spirals, semispheres, and rosette motifs. Women s costume was
tastefully and lavishly adorned. The Abashevian smiths learned much from
southern Ural metallurgists, the so-called Andronovo people, kin to the proto-
Scythian Timber-Grave people, and with whom the Abashevians had very close
contacts.
The richly ornamented Abashevian pots show a gradual development in
form and in ornament from the earlier phase of the Fat janovo culture in eastern
central Russia, and Andronovo influences. The pots were no longer globular but
flat-based and sometimes tulip shaped or biconical, the surface being well
smoothed and burnished. Ornamentation was impressed with a dentate tool or
incised, forming horizontal, zig-zag, wavy line, triangle, or meander patterns. The
burial rites of the Abashevo period were similar to those of the earlier Fat janovo.
The dead were buried in pits under low circular barrows, one or several graves to
each barrow. In some Chuvashian cemeteries graves were found to be surrounded
by a rectangular, circular, or elliptical timber fence. Each grave was a solid house
construction built of vertical logs and roofed with planks.
We know of no cemeteries or habitation sites from the last centuries of the
second millennium B.C. to prove the continuation of the Fat janovo culture. It
seems that in the middle Volga and Belaja river basins it disappeared quite
abruptly,
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due to a renewed expansion of the Timber-Grave culture from the south.
The Bronze Age is still a rather obscure period in the area between eastern
Lithuania and Latvia and the Oka river basin in central Russia. From pottery
remains in fortified hill-top villages it is seen that during the end of the second and
the beginning of the first millennium B.C. a cultural differentiation gradually took
place, and before the beginning of the Early Iron Age several local groups had
been formed. One was the so-called Brushed-Pottery group in eastern Lithuania,
southern Latvia, and north-western Byelo-Russia;3 another, closely related to the
Brushed-Pottery was the Milograd group in southern Byelo-Russia and the
northern fringes of the western Ukraine;4 and a third was the so-called Plain
Pottery group occupying the Desna, upper Dnieper, upper Oka, and upper Don
basins in central Russia. The last-named group, in the basins of the Desna and
upper Don, carries the name Bondarikha for the Late Bronze Age centuries, and
Jukhnovo for the Early Iron Age and the first centuries A.D.5
In spite of some local differences in the above mentioned areas, which may
represent the distributions of separate tribes, the general level of the culture, the
patterns of habitat, pottery, and the bone and stone implements, show a remarkable
uniformity and conservativism all over this territory. Bronze axes and ornaments
were quite rare. Pins, awls, needles, and arrow-heads were usually made of bone,
although hoards with bronze and silver objects of Late Hallstatt and Early La Tène
type are known from the Milograd group. Pottery was hand-made, and very simple
in form: beaker or barrel-shaped and flat-based as in the Brushed and Plain Pottery
groups, or rounded-based as in the Milograd. We find incisions and pits upon the
upper part of pots and frequently pinched ridges or pinched impressions around the
neck. The same forms and decoration
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persist throughout the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, and even in the first
centuries A.D.
The hilltop village culture in the uplands of eastern Lithuania, eastern
Latvia, Byelo-Russia, and western Greater Russia as far east as Moscow and the
upper Oka and upper Don basins-lasted throughout several millennia. Its Baltic
character is proved by the clear continuity of the cultural remains and by many
river names of Baltic origin which splendidly coincide with the distribution of the
Brushed, Milograd, and Plain Pottery groups. From the end of the eighth century
B.C. onward the earliest written records raise the prehistoric curtain, throwing
some light on historic events in the Cimmerian and Scythian domains in the Black
Sea area; and, from the time of Herodotus, on the northern neighbours of the
Scythians.
At the end of the second millennium the proto-Scythian Timber-Grave
culture moved westward from the lower Volga steppes towards the Black Sea
coasts, and at the end of the eighth century B.C. the Scythians succeeded in
conquering the Cimmerians who for over a millennium had occupied the northern
Black Sea coasts. A large proportion of the early Slavs in the Middle Dnieper basin
fell under the rule of the Scythians, but the Finno-Ugrian tribes and the eastern
Balts living in the forested areas remained outside the orbit of strong Scythian
influence. However, as centuries went by and the Scythians became involved in
war against the invading Persians, the northern tribes were also disturbed. Thanks
to these wars which Herodotus describes in Book IV of his history, we have the
earliest surviving written records concerning the history of eastern Europe at the
end of the sixth century B.C. Allusions to some tribal names may be regarded as
references to the Baltic and Finno-Ugrian tribes. Herodotus, who wrote around 450
B.C., describes an expedition which the Persian king Darius undertook against the
Scythians in the year 515. He mentions and approximately locates the seats of
Neuri,
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Androphagi, Melanchlaeni, Budini, and other tribes that lived north of
Scythia. Although we cannot expect accuracy in Herodotus geography, his
account is of importance. Of the Neuri and their neighbours he writes:
On the landward side, beginning from the Ister [Danube] Scythia is inclosed
by the Agathyrsi first, and then by the Neuri and the Androphagi, and last
the Melanchlaeni. (IV, 100)
So the Ister [Danube] is one of the rivers of Scythia. But the next after it is
the Tyras [Dniester], which riseth in a great lake in the north which is the
border between Scythia and the land of the Neuri. (IV, 51)
Beginning from the port of the Borysthenites [at the mouth of the Dnieper],
which is in the middle of the whole sea coast of Scythia, the Callipidae, who
are half Greek and half Scythian, are the first inhabitants. Beyond them
dwell another people, who are called Alizones. ... But beyond the Alizones
dwell the Scythian husbandmen, who sow corn not for food but for sale. And
above them dwell the Neuri, and beyond the Neuri towards the north wind
the land is uninhabited of men, so far as we know. (IV, 17)
Across the Borysthenes [the Dnieper], starting from the sea [Black Sea], the
first place is Hylaea; and above this dwell Scythian farmers. These Scythian
farmers inhabit the land for three days journey to, wards the east, extending
to the river which hath the name Panticapes [unidentified river], and eleven
days voyage up the Borysthenes towards the north. And the land beyond
them is desert for a great space, but after the desert dwell the Androphagi,
who are a separate people and in nowise Scythian. And above these the land
is truly a desert, and no nation of men liveth there, so far as we know. (IV.
18)6
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