Multidisciplinary investigations of the Bronze Age settlements in the Southern Trans-Urals (Russia)

The Southern Urals are one of Eurasia’s most important regions, marking the natural boundary between Europe and Asia. This geographical position surely played an essential role in stimulating the area’s active involvement in early processes of cultural and social developments that occurred, in particular, in the steppe and forest-steppe. This applies particularly to the Bronze Age in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, when a centre of advanced technological development and cultural interactions grew in the Southern Urals as the Sintashta and Petrovka cultures. During the past three decades, twenty-two settlements with closed circular, oval or rectangular fortifications have been discovered within a rather limited territory. These discoveries were made possible through the wide use of aerial photography and field surveys. Since 2008 a German-Russian project has attained most comprehensive results in the study of Bronze Age societies in the Southern Urals as part of an inter-disciplinary collaboration. The fundamental issue to which the project relates is that of the interrelationship between society and the environment, whereby a culture is regarded as a specific form of human adaptation. At a more definitive level, the project proposes to conduct a microregional investigation of the sites located in the valley of the Karagaily-Ayat River, a tributary of the Tobol River. Landscape, vegetation and climate are fundamental factors in the cultural development and economic use of space and environment. The interdisciplinary investigations are carried out at a microregional level and form the basis for gaining a better comprehension of settlements and cultural spheres. Eventually they can lead to large-scale observations and comparisons between natural areas and cultural spheres. The book presents the results achieved thus far during the first phase of the project (2008-2011).