Technological Data on Hand-Made Ceramics from the Middle Don Settlements of the Scythian Period

The paper presents the results of the petrographic study of Scythian ceramics from settlement sites in the forest-steppe Don region. A total of 107 samples from 10 fortified and unfortified settlements of the Middle Don culture were analyzed. The analysis identified the chemical composition of the employed clays, firing conditions and temperature, and molding paste formulation. Sand and grog mixture was the most common artificial mineral temper in the Middle Don region while grit was the most popular clay temper at the Upper Don Verkhneye Kazachye fortified settlement. This tradition could have been borrowed from the Gorodets population groups who lived nearby, the representatives of this archaeological culture used grit as the main tempering material more frequently. The pottery making by the Middle Don population was basically household production while a large variety of identified molding paste formulas, most of which have not yet been recorded in neighboring regions of the forest-steppe belt, show rather distinctive traits of the local ceramic traditions.