G.G. Pyatykh

Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow (bertinda@yandex.ru)

Key words: Late Bronze Age, Sintashta, pre-class society, cultural genesis, migrations, fortified settlements, ancient metallurgy.

Deriving archaeological cultures, furthermore, cultural systems of the pre-class society epoch from one “oasis” (“Sintashta”, “Volga-Ural” or another) is methodically incorrect and admittedly fruitless. Facts of archaeology and anthropology as well as the regularities of the expansion of cultural influences in the epoch of pre-class societies in total show that the cultures of the Late Bronze Age arose on multicultural basis. Predominant direction of migrations of that epoch, clearly showed on massive archaeological data from the sites of Volga-Ural, in general, was from the West and South-West to the East. The system of direct and indirect facts gives the ground to suggest that fortified settlements of Trans-Urals with the traces of metallurgic production were productive centres founded by alien clans of metallurgists.