Ancient Metallurgy in the USSR: The Early Metal Age (New Studies in Archaeology) - Hardcover

Chernykh, Evgenil Nikolaevich

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521252571 ISBN 13: 9780521252577

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Synopsis

One of the leading Soviet archaeologists describes the development of ancient mining and metallurgy in the northern half of Eurasia. While the first traces of metallurgical activity date from between the seventh and the sixth millennium BC, significant mining developed only in the fifth millennium BC, in the northern Balkans and Carpathians. Metal producing centres were in these northern 'barbarian peripheral' regions rather than in the Near East and Asia Minor, areas traditionally associated with early classical civilization. Professor Chernykh describes successive periods of metallurgical activity in different regions: the Carpatho-Balkan Metallurgical Province of the Copper Age: the Circumpontic of the Early and Middle Bronze Age: and the Eurasian, European Caucasian, Central Asian and Irano-Afghan of the Late Bronze Age. He provides detailed information about the different groups of copper and bronze artefacts, their chemical composition, and their dispersion in time and space. He analyses the international metallurgical trade and division of labour and, finally, the collapse of the sociocultural systems in these metallurgical centres in the first millennium BC.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521252571
• ISBN 13: 9780521252577
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 359