Features of pottery as an indicator of Ural-Siberian population interaction in Early Middle Ages

The approbation of the methods of A. Bobrinsky and H. Nordstrom' morphological analysis of utensils is presented in the article. The aim of the research is to identify levels of interaction between the early medieval population of the Ural-Siberian region, in particular, the representatives of the Bakal, Bahmutino, Nevolino and Kushnarenkovo archaeological cultures (AC). The sample is composed of the materials of the Kozlov, Ustyug-1, Nevolinsky, Brody, Verh-Sainsky, Birsk, Kushnarenkovsky, and Lagerevsky cemeteries of the 4th - 7th centuries AD. 20 out of them are the vessels of the Bakal and Bahmutino AC, and 18 are from the Nevolino and Kushnarenkovo AC. The comparison of calculations was made by using point schedules and factorial analysis in the package Statistica 10 software. The most established tradition of forming stable contour lines and the usual forms of medium proportion vessels was detected in the Bahmutino copies. Among the West Siberian utensils, the vessels, that imitated low-average proportions, were found, indicating a change in the ideas about the form in the 4th - 7th centuries. The Nevolino and Kushnarenkovo ceramics became isolated from other groups, and a large proportion of the imitations of low-medium and medium-high proportions was recorded in their samples. As a result, the author concludes that a common historical and cultural context of the Bahmutino and Bakal societies probably had a single substrate at the beginning of their formation. Low-average proportions in the samples of the Nevolino culture speak in favor of close ties of the population in the 4th - 7th centuries. They were manifested in the transitional forms of pottery. The concept of the form of the Kushnarenkovo potters was changed under the influence of the representatives of media forest steppe and steppe cultures of the Ural-Siberian region.