Rare varieties of iron arrowheads of the populations of the northern piedmonts of Altai at the initial Early Middle Ages (based on materials from the Gorny-10 necropolis)

The article presents a series of rare iron arrowheads discovered during excavations of the Gorny-10 necropolis. This site in the Krasnogorsk District of the Altai Kray was studied in 2000-2002, and currently can be considered a basic complex for studying various aspects of the history of the population of the southern West Siberia in the initial Early Middle Ages and the features of weapons and military affairs. The studied collection includes 13 arrowheads, most of which are intact. Five types of arrowheads have been distinguished through the morphological and classification analysis. Comparison of the derived data with collections from the nearby sites makes it possible to infer on the age and possible directions of the development of various shapes of the arrowheads. The trihedral armor-piercing arrowhead with a cylindrical stop (type 1), was preliminary defined as originating in Central Asia origin and belonging chronologically to the late 7th - first half of the 8th centuries AD. Tetrahedral shear points with a quadrangular (type 2) and elongated-quadrangular (type 3) blades emerged in the Altai forest-steppe in the second half of the 6th - first half of the 7th centuries AD and are not associated with the military affairs of the population of the Odintsovo Culture of the Upper Ob region and the early Turks of Altai. Single-bladed arrowheads (types 4 and 5) are dated to the 7th -first half of the 8th centuries AD and differ significantly from the products recorded in younger sites of the Turkic Culture of the Altai-Sayan region. It has been inferred that the development of the set of combat arrowheads from the Gorny-10 necropolis was not associated with the military tradition of the early medieval Turks of Central Asia and the local (Odintsovo) population of the Altai forest-steppe.