Residential Architecture of Fortified Settlements of Sintashta-Petrovka Type: Sources Review

Abstract

The purpose of the article is the generalization and characterization of the main data on sources for the study of residential architecture of fortified settlements Sintashta-Petrovka type. A brief description of these settlements is given. The theoretical aspects of the ability to study architecture by the archaeological sources are presented. Information on the conducted field researches is given: both about archaeological excavations and the study by remote sensing - geophysical methods and decoding aerial photographs. The total number of currently known settlements is 24, 14 of them were excavated, there were 167 excavated dwellings, 71 of them have been excavated completely, for 11 settlements micromagnetic maps of the whole or greater part of the area were obtained, for 21 settlements the decipherment of aerial photographs was held. The comparability and complementarity of the results obtained by different methods are discussed. Questions are raised about the quality of the research, about the completeness of their reflection in field reports and publications. The conclusion is made about sufficiently broad base of sources accumulated to date, the main contribution to its replenishment was made by three research teams. The novelty of the study is to summarize data of long-term field studies providing information about the sources not only in the text, but tabular and graphical format.

Keywords

• settlement archaeology
• residential architecture
• bronze age
• fortified settlements of sintashta-petrovka type
• archaeological sources
• settlement archaeology