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
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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