The Kozyulino II hillfort: The history of research and cultural affiliation

The article presents the results of archaeological research from the Kozyulino II hillfort, located at the mouth of the Tom River in the northern part of the Tomsk Ob River region. This region lies within a forest-steppe contact zone, where interactions between various cultural formations of the taiga and the steppe occurred in antiquity. During the Early Iron Age, one of the northernmost formations of the Scytho-Siberian world emerged in the Tomsk Ob region - the Shelomok culture. Its period of existence spans the 7th to 3rd centuries BC. However, until recently, its early stage (7th-6th centuries BC) was represented exclusively by materials from burial grounds, while settlement complexes included sites only from the later period (5th-3rd centuries BC). A significant chronological gap between the Late Bronze Age cultures of the Tomsk Ob region, which include the Irmen, Yelov, and Molchanovo cultures, made it difficult to reliably establish the local cultural basis of the Shelemok culture. The Kozyulino II hillfort was discovered in 1974 by L.M. Pletneva and was initially dated to the last third of the 1st millennium BC. She later attributed it to the Shelomok culture and refined its dating to the 5th-3rd centuries BC. In the 1990s, work at the site was conducted by A.D. Gaman, who established that the hillfort has a complex fortification system and is one of the largest settlement complexes in Western Siberia. In 2003, reconnaissance work, including exploratory test pitting and geophysical surveys, was carried out by D.Yu. Rybakov, who noted the uniqueness of the ceramic assemblage, which has no analogues either within the Tomsk Ob region or beyond. In 2005 and 2007, excavation works were conducted by M.A. Rudkovskaya. Based on the ceramic assemblage, it was also concluded that the site belongs to the transitional period from the Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, with a proposed date of the 8th-6th centuries BC. According to Rudkovskaya, the materials from the hillfort reflect the process of the autochthonous emergence of the Shelomok culture based on an Irmen component. As a result of the conducted research, it has been established that the materials from the Kozyulino II hillfort reflect the initial stage of the Shelomok culture. Its formation occurred on the basis of the Yelov culture, not the Irmen culture. This is evidenced by materials from the Yelov burials of the Yelovsky II burial ground, which show the closest parallels to the pottery of the Kozyulino II hillfort. Based on bronze artifacts, a more precise dating for the site has been proposed: the 7th-6th centuries BC. The presence of Molchanovo pottery raises the question of possible interaction between the Shelomok people and the Late Molchanovo population during the early stage of the Shelomok culture's existence. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References