Revisiting the Issue of Pottery Technology of the Abashevo Culture (based on the data from the funerary assemblages in the Orenburg Urals region)

This paper is the first to publish data relating to the studies of the technology used to make Abashevo clay pots, considering the archaeological and chronological contexts of the funerary sites in the West Orenburg region dating to the Late Bronze Age. The burials are attributed to the Abashevo culture; however, they also show close contacts between the Abashevo population and the Sintashta groups in the steppe Trans-Urals. The radiocarbon age of the burials falls within the first two centuries of the second millennium BC. It can be inferred from the technological analysis of the clay pots from the burials, that, despite evidence of intermingled cultural traditions in the burial rite and pot morphology, the production technology used to make the analyzed vessels shows consistent signs of only one tradition which is substantially different from Sintashta pottery-making. For this reason, the study samples of the vessels, probably, represents the so called «Abashevo standard» of Late Bronze Age pottery technology in the Orenburg Urals region.