Sergey B. Valchak^a,^b,# and Evgeniy V. Muravenko^c,##

^aInstitute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow, Russia
^bRussian State Social University, Moscow, Russia
^cDepartment of State Protection of Cultural Heritage Objects of Krasnodar Territory Administration, Krasnodar, Russia

^#E-mail: valchaks@yandex.ru
^##E-mail: evgeniimb@mail.ru

Keywords: helmets, morphology, technology, the Early Scythian period, Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern Asia.

The article publishes the discovery of a new cast helmet of the “Kuban type” of the Early Scythian culture. The helmet is considered against the background of other similar cast helmets from the territory of Eastern Europe dating from the 7th–6th centuries BC. The authors discuss an assumption of the origin of East European cast helmets from the prototypes of the Zhou period from Northern China. Special attention is paid to the typological similarity and difference of East European specimens from similar finds from Central and East Asia. The paper proposes a variant for the reconstruction of the technology of mould manufacturing and casting of the product. The authors provide the results of X-ray fluorescence analysis of the metal in the published helmet and compare them with data on other known finds of Kuban type helmets. The comparison shows the difference in the composition of metal which they were made from.

DOI: 10.31857/S0869606323030200, EDN: CVLSJK