Viktor А. Borzunov

Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russia

E-mal: victor.borzunov@mail.ru

Keywords: Trans-Urals, fortified settlement, migrations, the Early Iron Age, the Early Middle Ages.

The settlement is located on the northern shore of Melkoyе Lake, a flowage reservoir in the upper reaches of the river Iset’, at the western outskirts of the city of Yekaterinburg, on a high beak- shaped cusp (16 m2) separated from the rock terrace by a short (19 m) ditch with a passage in the middle. In 1979, the author uncovered a part of the site (104 of total 650 m2) with objects and materials of three periods. The first period (the 8th–6th centuries BC) includes the remains of the Gamayun settlement with a dugout and a large log-built fortified dwelling with a ditch, and finds of potter y, stone and clay objects, stone-wastes. The second period (the 5th–3rd centuries BC) comprises a village of the aboriginal Itkul’ culture with a hearth and a pit located in a light frame structure, Itkul’ and Gorokhovo ceramics, ceramic “spindle whorls” (“hand-wheels”), clay nozzle and an iron knife. The third period (the 4th–6th centuries) is represented by ground fire sites and ceramics of the “Lower Tobol” type. The Gamayun settlements were founded by natives of the upper reaches of the Tavda River, the descendants of hunters and fishermen of the Konda and the Lower Ob’ River region. The medieval village was abandoned by the mixed population of the Lower Tobol region, the heirs of the fishermen and hunters of the taiga Ob’ River region and the herdsmen of the Tobol-Irtysh forest-steppe. The main causes of these migrations were two cold and wet climatic periods that took place in the early 1st millennium BC and the middle of the 1^st millennium AD. The f light of part of the Gorokhovo communities to the mountain-forest Trans- Urals and to the Southern Urals was caused by the westward resettlement of the Sargat cattle- breeding tribes of the West Siberian forest-steppe.

DOI: 10.31857/S086960630004793-1