In search of iron ore mines: a geo-archaeological perspective

The article elaborates on the search for the iron-ore basis of the Shaitan archaeological complex, a major iron making centre of Western Siberia in the second millennium AD, with particular attention paid to the issue of identifying the iron ore used on the site via geochemical analyses. The MnO/TiO2 ratio proved to be a good indicator of medieval mines. The geo-chemical analyses showed that from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries two iron mines were operated within the Shaitan archaeological complex - the occurrence of siderite in the Kireevsk area and bog ore deposits in the Pozdnyakovo area, the two situated within 40 kilometers from one another. The tradition of various ores being used by the same population has been revealed for the first time in the archaeology of Western Siberia. We hypothesise that Shaitan smelters widely used different types of ore due to the quality of iron made by them. Unlike the Kireevsk siderite ores, the Pozdnyakovo bog ores are rich in manganese (1.2 to 13%) which increased the strength and hardness of the produced iron. Such ores are rarely found in Northern Eurasia. Perhaps for that reason the amount of the Pozdnyakovo ore and slag with a high content of manganese (1 to 8.2%) is prevalent on the Shaitan complex sites. We further hypothesise that metallurgists founded settlements in the taiga zone of the Tomsk Ob region specifically for the purpose of extracting this rare and valuable ore. Analysis of archaeological, ethnographic and written sources established that indigenous peoples of Western Siberia started to deal with various ores at the turn of the first and second millennia AD and used these continuously up until the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.

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