Presented are the results of the analysis of pottery skills of a group of the Bronze Age Alakul Culture, who made burials under mounds 1 and 14 of the Alakul burial ground (forest-steppe Trans-Urals). The study was carried out within the framework of the historical and cultural approach and following the methodology developed by A.A. Bobrinsky. The traditional methods of making vessels that existed among potters of the analysed population have been determined, the heterogeneity of potters' views on the initial plastic raw materials has been detected, as well as some differences in the manufacture of vessels from different burial mounds at the stages of compiling moulding compounds and design. As a result of the study, the earlier assumption, based on the analysis of shape and ornamentation of the products, about the increased complexity of the composition of the analysed population at the stage of construction of mound 1 and the processes of mixing, in all likelihood, of related groups of the population who had their own traditions in the manufacture of pottery, manifested in the materials of kurgan 14, has been confirmed.

Keywords: forest-steppe zone of the Tobol river, Bronze Age, Alakul cemetery, Alakul Culture, ceramics, historical-and-cultural approach, technical and technological analysis.

 

Funding. The work was carried out within the framework of the state assignment of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (No. FWRZ-2021-0006).

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Accepted: 03.10.2024

Article is published: 15.12.2024