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Borodino, Seima and their Contemporaries: Key Sites for the Bronze Age Chronology of Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Marija Gimbutas
Affiliation:
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University

Extract

The hoard from Borodino, north-west of the Black Sea, and the cemetery of Seima in central Russia are the best known names in the literature dealing with the Bronze Age of eastern Europe. On the alleged dates of Borodino and Seima the whole structure of the Bronze Age chronology of Russia and even Siberia is built.

Tallgren in his Pontide Préscythique (1926) and in his earlier publications dated the Borodino and Seima finds to the period from 1300–1100 B.C. This date was used by many other archæologists. Tallgren based his views on analogies between Borodino and Koban axes (Tallgren 1926, 140) which actually do not exist. Koban axes are different; they belong to the Koban culture of the early Iron Age in the central Caucasus around the end of the second millennium B.C. The Borodino hoard is definitely earlier than the Koban culture. Another indication of a more or less absolute date of the Borodino hoard is the similarity of the ornamental motifs executed on the Borodino pin with those on the gold buttons from Shaft-Graves Nos. IV and V of Mycenæ. This relationship was already indicated by Spitsyn (1916).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1957

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