New find of weapon of the late bronze age in the Barnaul Ob region

This article presents new evidence of the Late Bronze Age from Pervomaisk District of the Altai Krai, where the team from the ANO "Archaeological Research of Siberia" discovered the Starokraichikovo settlement and soil burial ground. This site is located on the secondfloodplain terrace on the right bank of the Chumysh River 0.1 km southeast of the village of Starokraichikovo. Archaeological evidence included remains of a destroyed burial, bronze spearhead, and body fragments of a handmade undecorated ceramic vessel. This type of bronze spearhead was widespread at the sites of the Late Bronze Age and the Initial Iron Age. Specific feature of the spearhead from Starokraichikovo is a ledge on the socket which has no known parallels. Similar bronze socketed leaf-shaped or laurel-leaved spearheads with a double blade quite rarely appear in the Upper Ob region. Spearheads with the closest layout metrics to our find come from the complexes of the Late Bronze Age and transitional period from the Bronze Age to Iron Age. The bronze spearhead can be widely dated to a period from the 15th-14th centuries BC to the 9th-8th centuries BC. The archaeological context of the finds suggests a previously unknown soil burial ground of the Late Bronze Age.