The History of the Population of the Ural-Volga Region During the Early Iron Age (discourse analysis of the studies in the XX century)

Abstract

The content and stylistics analysis (critical discourse analysis – CDA) of studies on the history of the tribes of the Kama region and the Urals in the Early Iron Age, written by Soviet archaeologists during the XX century, allows us to give them a certain reference. In their essence they are historical and archaeological discourses (statements) on the socio-economic history of the region based on rather limited empirical data. Standing on the positions of the Marxist methodology of history (the theory of socio-economic formations) and the Marxist understanding of historicism, which was established in Soviet archaeology in the 30–50s, the authors of these discourses compensate for the lack of empiricism with a methodologically verified interpretation of archaeological empiricism in the context of the formation theory of history. A steady, monotonously progressive process of decomposition among the tribes of the Kama region and the Urals of the tribal system during the entire epoch of the Early Iron Age is the result of these interpretations.

Keywords

• archaeology
• the ananyino
• pyany bor
• kara-abyz culture
• historism
• discourse-analysis
• tribal system
• union of tribes