The Provenance of the Bronze Age Wool Textiles from the Western Orenburg Region (Russia)

The appearance of wool fabrics in the burials of the Srubnaya culture in the steppe zone of the Trans-Urals in 1925–1475 cal BC was a part of the general process of textile industrial transformation in the Bronze Age. This study aims to determine 87Sr/86Sr variations in the fragments of archaeological wool fiber from four burials of the Srubnaya culture and compare them with the local baseline of bioavailable strontium (mollusk shells, vegetation, soil leachates, river water, and modern animal bones) of the western Orenburg region. The conducted study has indicated that the samples of bioavailable strontium for the studied sites are characterized by complex isotope-geochemical interactions, and the “riverine” sample association (river water, wetland vegetation, shells) could not be excluded from the consideration and isoscape construction. For four studied archaeological textiles of the Srubnaya culture (from the burial grounds of Gerasimovka III, Pleshanovo, Kamenka, and Bogolyubovka), we assume the possible local origin of raw materials (wool) for textile production. The place of lambing and sheep/goat grazing could have been on pastures in the south-eastern slope of the East European platform.