Thin Cordoned Ceramics of the End of the Early Iron Age from the Pinchuga-6 Burial Ground (Lower Angara Region)

Abstract

The first half of the 1st millennium AD is a practically unexplored period of the Lower Angara region history. The Pinchuga-6 was the first completely excavated burial ground of the end of the Early Iron Age in the region. It dates back to the 3rd to the 4th centuries AD. The materials of the burial ground allow for the first time to make a guess about the particular pottery that existed at that time in the Lower Angara region. Five typologically uniform vessels were found in the burial ground. The article provides a detailed description of the ceramics from the burials, including technical and morphological characteristics of the vessels and their location within the burials. Identification of Yazaevka, being a new type of thin cordoned ceramics, is substantiated on the basis of the distinguished features. Known material similarities were provided, the area of this type of vessels, limited by the southern taiga of the Middle Yenisei and the Lower Angara, was identified. Several features of ceramics of the Yazaevka type have been identified: medium-sand molding mass with the inclusion of stone-pounded temper; bottom-capacitive program for constructing; construction by patchwork within the model form using a leather lining; vessels can be round-bottomed, flat-bottomed and sharp-bottomed; the body can be either low spherical or high paraboloid; the ceramic is ornamented in the upper third of the form with the thin raised borders formed by finger pinches; the upper part of the vessel is decorated with impressions or notches, and the neck with finger pricks. Ceramics of the same type are present both in the burial and settlement complexes. The Yazaevka type of pottery dates back to the second quarter of the 1st millennium AD, however these vessels type are no longer encountered at the sites of the second half of the 1st millennium AD.