Viktor A. Borzunov^a,#

^aUral Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russia

^#E-mail: victor.borzunov@mail.ru

Keywords: Middle Urals, taiga, metallurgical centre, the Early Iron Age.

The Serny Klyuch fortified settlement is a unique multi-layer site of the Ural taiga, with an area of approx. 1000 m2, containing materials from the Chalcolithic to the New Age (III millennium BC – II millennium AD). In 1989–1993, two excavations (502 m2) uncovered half of the settlement site and the remains of the defensive system. It has been established that at the beginning of the Iron Age in the upper reaches of the Ufa River on a high (20–25 m) limestone rock with three steep edges, a metal-making facilities were founded, which functioned in the 6th/5th – 3rd/2nd centuries BC. This is the westernmost site of the Trans-Ural (Itkul) centre of metallurgy, where the largest number of adobe furnaces has been investigated (19), as well as three adobe production sites for metal processing and three industrial and residential buildings. After the first blast furnaces had been erected at the northeastern end of the cliff, the village was fenced with a log defensive wall and a shallow ditch 40–42 m long to protect its floor, strongly sloping western side. The main purpose of founding seasonal settlements is the smelting of copper and the production of various objects from it, including arrowheads of the Scythian-Sarmatian types – the main export weapon of the Trans-Ural metallurgists. Finds of iron knives, slag, and blanks of a knife-dagger (the latter were revealed in furnace No. 13) testify to the beginning of local production of ferrous metal in the Ural taiga around the 5th–4th centuries BC.

DOI: 10.31857/S0869606322020064