Non-ferrous metal of the Tagar culture: the history of the studies of copper-based alloy composition from 1960s to 2000s

The paper focuses on the history of the studies of the chemical composition of bronze and copper products of the Tagar archaeological culture in the period from the 1960s to the 2000s. The main results of Yu.S. Grishin's, I.V. Bogdanova-Beresovskaya's, D.V. Naumov's, Ya.I. Sunchugashev's, S.S. Minyaev's, N.F. Sergeeva's and S.V. Khavrin's research have been summarized and analyzed. Their achievements (equally of archaeologists and chemists) let form the idea about bronze metallurgy of the Tagar archaeological culture mainly at the Minusinsk basin. On the basis of the results of the elemental analysis of the Tagar bronzes conducted in the second half of the 20th century the typical geochemical admixtures of the Tagar metal and the main types of bronze alloys (arsenic, arsenic-tin and tin bronzes) became clear, the artificial or natural arsenic additions were discussed, and the special role of tin and lead metal additions was declared. During the 1960s, the first mass data were received about the composition of bronzes from the Yagunya and Kondrashka sites that were situated in the Mariinsk forest-steppe and belonged to the northern area of the Tagar culture. At the same time the first comparison of forest-steppe and Minusinsk basin bronze geochemical characteristics took place. An idea was formed about the copper-based alloys peculiarities from different chronological complexes dating by the Early Tagar period, when arsenic and low tin alloys predominated, the Saragash stage, with the prevalence of tin bronzes and extension of lead addition, and the Tesin stage, when arsenic and arsenic-tin bronzes predominated again. From the 1960s to the 2000s, all elemental analysis based on two methods - spectral-emission and X-ray fluorescence. The solution of many Tagar bronze metallurgy questions and other successes of archaeometallurgy were impossible without achievements of Russian natural sciences and instrumental industry in the 1960s-1980s. The correlation of all scientific branches was confirmed during the crisis of the 1990s. In the 2000s, there were convenient conditions for ancient materials and the Tagar bronze research, they were conditioned by the large number of archaeological sources about the Tagar metallurgy in museum funds, by the relative technical accessibility of the elemental analysis, and, at last, by the invariable scientific attention to the historical processes in the Southern Siberia at the Early Iron age.

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