The Bronze Age in the Karagaily-Ayat Region (Trans-Urals, Russia)

The Bronze Age is considered as a period of important technological breakthroughs, serious economic changes and social contrasts. Metal, as an object of widespread demand, fierce competition and social prestige, entered into the sphere of power and ritual on a larger geographic scale. The different areas experienced these processes in their characteristic way, depending on specific circumstances: environmental conditions, natural resources, economic and human potential, etc.
Bronze Age sites in the Southern Trans-Urals are represented by fortified and open settlements as well as kurgan necropolises situated in river valleys.
A cultural-historical approach was the major theoretical line of inquiry in this study with regard to their systematization. This work resulted in a regional archaeological (cultural) taxonomy, which consists of several cultural sequences of the Bronze Age, coinciding mostly with the third and second millennia BC.
With the new volume entitled "The Bronze Age in the Karagaily-Ayat region (Trans Urals, Russia). Culture, Environment and Economy", we have now succeeded in presenting four monographs in the series Frankfurter Archäologische Forschungen since 2013 on the joint research of the Russian-German cooperation project on the Bronze Age in the Trans Urals. The new studies cover topics from the second part of the project between 2011 and 2014, from our first joint project between 2009 and 2014 on the fortified settlements of the Sintashta-Petrovka phase in the Trans-Ural between 2100 and ca. 1800 B.C.
In many respects, they shed new light on the natural and cultural landscape of the Bronze Age at the south-eastern end of the Ural Mountains. Nevertheless, the phenomenon and the sudden appearance of today's up to 25 known sites with fortified and structured settlements still leave plenty of room for many different observations and interpretations.