The bronze cauldron from kurgan 4. Krasnoselskaya 9 kurgan group (Krasnodar krai)

In 2020 the Western Caucasus expedition excavated the Krasnoselskaya 9 kurgan group. Kurgan 4 contained a broken bronze cauldron. Based on morphological and technological features. it is referred to a large group of cast bronze cauldrons which were widespread in the Middle Yenisei region but are not found in the southern Russian steppes and the North Caucasus. The Japanese scholar Hatakeyama Tei singles out these vessels into type I ‘1 Abii' dating them to the 5th-4th centuries BC. A practically identical cauldron was found in the dromos of grave 2. kurgan 5. at the Vysokaya Mogila - Studenikin Mar kurgan ground of Bogatyrskiye mogilki kurgan group 4. in the South Urals. The cauldron in question is likely to be dated to the 4th century BC. Thus it marks the south-westernmost point of the area where the ‘Siberian' type of cauldrons was spread. This type of cauldrons was in use in South Siberia until the 2nd-1st centuries BC. The said cauldron might have got into the kurgan much later than the period when such cauldrons were commonly used since the custom of placing cauldron fragments into a burial construction is most frequently recorded among the Sarmatian population groups during the 1st century BC - first half of the 2nd century AD