Four Cultures of the First Half of the Early Iron Age from the Forest Trans-Urals and Tobol River Region

The article presents updated characteristics of the Gamayun (10th —4th centuries BC) and indigenous Itkul’ (7th —3rd/2nd centuries BC) cultures of the Early Iron Age in the Trans-Urals mountain-forest area that came from the north. The heterogeneous Iset’ culture (circa 9th—4th centuries BC) is identified and characterized, which arose here in the process of interaction between alien hunters and fishermen from the taiga Ob’ River basin and communities of the Late Bronze Age of the Barkhatovo culture from the Lower Tobol River region with a complex (mainly cattle-breeding) economy (12th/11th —9th/8th centuries BC), who moved west in search of copper deposits. Previously, Iset’ materials were considered within the framework of the Itkul’ culture. The latter was formed by clans of metallurgists who emerged from the later Mezhovka cattle-breeding groups and became the basis for the formation of the Trans-Ural center of non-ferrous metallurgy in 8th/7th —3rd centuries BC. Its appearance was determined not so much by the internal needs of the Trans-Ural societies as by the urgent need for non-ferrous metal of the surrounding tribes, primarily the forest Cis-Ural Ananyino and steppe Sauromatian-Sarmatian tribes. Itkul’ metallurgists, who lived in well-fortified centers on mountains, hills, rocky capes, and high edges of terraces, produced copper products mainly according to imported samples, but in most cases did not have direct contact with the consumers of their products. Groups of representatives of the Iset’ culture acted as intermediaries in trade operations with copper. Their ceramics, unlike Itkul’, were widespread in small quantities in settlements of different cultures — from the Kama River in the west to Baraba and Upper Ob’ river in the east. Population of the Lower Tobol River region in 9th —6th centuries BC with a complex economy (cattle breeding, fishing, hunting), erroneously interpreted as an “eastern version of the Itkul’ culture”, was, in fact, an independent formation — the Yurtobor culture. It arose based on local communities of the Barkhatovo culture with the participation of people from the mountain-forest Trans-Urals (Gamayun and Iset’ groups), as well as from the taiga and forest-steppe regions of Western Siberia (bearers of the Suzgun, Beloyar, Kul’ma, Zhuravlevo, Baitovo, and other cultures