Introduction

The selection of articles published in this issue contains some of the materials presented at the all-Russian academic conference «On the threshold of civilization and statehood» held in the Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciencesin November 2014. The meeting was originally proposed by the Department for theoryand methodology of the Institute of Archaeology. The choice of subject was far from a coincidence. It was very important both with regard to general theory and also in a practicalsense. Scholars working on the question of society’s transition (regardless of territory orchronology) from a primitive level to statehood, are always conscious of the enormousproblems connected with it - problems of both a practical and theoretical nature. Thereare often few written sources relating to that transition and the sociological informationto be gleaned from archaeological materials is very meagre. Ideally research into thissubject should be multi-disciplinary (using written, archaeological and other sources), butunfortunately such opportunities are the exception rather than the rule. A certain degreeof optimism relating to solution of these complex issues has arisen thanks to the wide application of natural sciences in archaeology in recent years. This series of publicationsreflects the current situation in this field