Miedziana siekiera z miejscowości Azierszczyna, rejon Rieczyca, obwód Homel, na Białorusi. Z badań nad początkami metalurgii nad górnym Dnieprem

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Date

2012

Authors

Czebreszuk, Janusz
Kryvalcevič, Mikola

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Abstract

The axe presented in the paper is an isolated find discovered in 2008. It came to the surface during drainage works on the terrace at the mouth of the Vyedrich river, a right-bank tributary of the Dnieper. In typological terms, it is a tool of the shaft-hole group widely known in the European Bronze Age. The Azyershchina axe, however, carries a number of specific features which make it difficult to find their unequivocal analogies. Similar, though not analogous, artefacts come from vast territories covering not only the drainage basin of the Dnieper but also the swathes of land along the Baltic Sea and the drainage basin of the middle Dnieper, and even the regions on the Dniester. The finds from the Baltic zone alike the Azyershchina specimen, numbered among the so-called shaft-hole Baltic axes of Littausdorf, Szylina Mała and Giżycko types, are particularly abundant. They are all more or less closely dated to the 5th H(B2) or 4th H(A2) H(B1) period of the Bronze Age. Another Baltic zone type showing formal similarities with the Azyershchina artefact is the Skandawa type, though the latter’s dating falls mainly in the 6th Bronze Age period. Later still - Hallstatt A1 and A2 - is the chronology of shaft-hole axes known from the middle Dnieper and from the Dniester described as shafthole axes of the Czarnolas type. The preserved remains of an ashwood shaft in the cone allowed to provide the Azyershchina artefact with its own carbon dating: Poz-36252, 2755 ±35 BP (68,2% - 926-840 cal BC; 95,4% - 996-987 cal BC; 980-825 cal BC). The radiocarbon date allows to state the chronology of the axe’s use at maximally years 996 – 825 BC. In the relative chronology of the northern part of Central Europe it means the second half of the 4th and the first half of the 5th period of the Bronze Age. Also, metallurgical research allowed to recognise the material of which the axe was made. It was copper with an admixture of silicon, in other words, a unique alloy with no known analogies. All in all, the axe found at Azyershchina was probably made on the spot on the upper Dnieper, as evidenced by its morphological exclusivity and a not very high level of casting technology. Furthermore, the specificity of the material may attest to local metallurgical experiments. Its maker existed within the production environment connected most probably with the Baltic zone, though southern influences (the middle Dnieper basin and the territories along the Dniester) cannot be excluded.

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Keywords

metalurgia, Dniepr, archeologia, miedź, epoka brązu

Citation

Fontes Archaeologici Posnanienses, vol. 48 2012, pp. 221-236

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Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
Biblioteka Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego