Metal woman decoration of the don alans (historiography of the problem and actual tasks)

The author considers several stages in the investigation of Saltovo-Mayatskaya culture decorations and distinguishes the basic directions in previous researches. On this base a series of actual problems are raised. In the paper the way for solving of the problems in question is suggested, namely, compiling a database for the whole accumulated material, and its processing with the use of multivariate statistical analysis. This investigational strategy gives a possibility to consider the whole corpus of accumulated data correctly and present mathematically verifiable historical reconstructions on this basis.