Understanding the productive economy during the Bronze Age through archaeometallurgical and palaeoenvironmental research at Kargaly (Southern Urals, Orenburg, Russia)

Vast regions of Eurasia have little or no copper ore. Accordingly, Evgenii Chernykh (1992; 1993; Chernij et al. 1990; Chernykh, Avilova et al. 2000; 2002) has posited that metallurgy is the critical factor for understanding the long-distance interactions of eastern European and north-west Asian societies from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age. He has defined various metallurgical provinces based on the technical and typological characteristics of the centres of metalworking and/or production. The oldest and most important mining and metallurgical centre of the great Eurasian steppes is Kargaly. Production at this centre corresponds to the successive Circumpontic and Euroasiatic Metallurgical Provinces (Chernykh 1996, 87–8). The copper deposits of Kargaly lie in the steppe in Orenburg oblast, about 150 km north-west of its capital city. Kargaly’s 11 principal mining districts cover about 500 km (Fig. 1).