The burial with a bronze hammer-axe from the Andreevskiy kurgan in Stavropol region

The paper describes burial 19 containing a bronze hammer-axe from kurgan 1 located in the vicinity of the Andreevskiy settlement near the town of Georgievsk in the North Caucasian Mineral Waters region. The site was excavated by R. V. Prokofyev. The burial is primary one in the second kurgan mound constructed earlier over the burials attributed to the Dolinskoye variant of the Maykop-Novosvobodnaya community. The entire surface of the discussed hammer-axe from burial 19 is densely covered with cast decoration. The radiocarbon date of the burial puts it within the third quarter of 3rd mill. BC. The article presents analogies to the hammer-axe among similar artifacts from the Fore-Caucasus and the steppe Volga region. It also analyzes decoration patterns on such hammer-axes and comes to the conclusion on their symbolic meaning as scepter-axes. Production of this type of weapons is associated with the central ForeCaucasus.