Attila Kagan of the Huns from the kind of Velsung. Сергей Юрьевич Соловьев

that the inventory was present in all burials with signs of neutralization.

      Culture

      The type of economy of the carriers of the log-house cultural-historical community was mainly based on stall and distant cattle breeding, which partially supplemented the agriculture among the population of the Berezhnovo-Mayev log-house culture. In the Dnieper-Donetsk interfluve, isolated grains of cultivated cereals were discovered, which indicates the presence of floodplain agriculture in the economy of the Srubny tribes. In the Ciscaucasia and Caspian steppes and semi-deserts, semi-nomadic pastoralism may have been practiced. Nevertheless, the basis of the economy of the settled log-house population of the Late Bronze Age was stall and distant cattle breeding. Cattle breeding was a priority; horses accounted for a smaller percentage in the herd. Mining and metallurgical production, which was based on the copper sandstones of the Urals (Kargalinskoye deposit) and the Donetsk Ridge (Bakhmutskoye deposit), played an important role in the economy of the demographic cultural and historical community, and ore occurrences of the Middle Volga region were also used. The basic production of metal products was mainly located in several towns of foundry metallurgists – Usovo Lake (Podonechie), Mosolovka (Podonye), Lipovy Gully (Middle Volga), Gorny 1 (Cisurals).

      The tools necessary for metalworking are represented by axes, hammers, hammers, ore graters, flat and grooved chisels and chisels, cut-type knives and “daggers”. In the late Srubnaya time, logging blacksmiths master the secret of obtaining critical iron, from which the first few products, mainly small in size and weak in manufacturing quality, are forged. There are jewelry made of gold.

      The lack of written sources significantly complicates the solution of the issue of ethnicity of the tribes of the Srubnaya cultural and historical community of the Late Bronze Age. Thus, the main method for determining ethnicity is to establish a relationship between the range of the tribes of the Srubnaya community and the spread of Indo-Iranian hydronyms and toponyms. Their pre-Scythian origin was convincingly proved by the linguist V.I. Abaev. Later, N. L. Chlenova traced the Iranian hydronyms in the steppe and forest-steppe zone from the Dnieper to the Ob, which completely coincided with the distribution area of the Srub and Andronovo cultural and historical communities and proved their belonging to the Iranian-speaking group of the Indo-European language family.

      According to V.V. Napolsky, borrowings in the Finno-Ugric languages indicate that native speakers of the steppe cultures of the Bronze Age spoke the language of the Indo-Aryan type.Such attribution, as evidenced by the phonetics of borrowing, has traditionally been rejected for historical reasons. East Iranian speech spread only in the steppe with the culture of roll ceramics at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Carriers of the carcass culture chronologically preceded the Scythians and Cimmerians. For this reason, the carcass culture is often regarded as an archaeological analogue of the first Iranian dialects of the Northern Black Sea region. In other words, culture bearers are predecessors of the Scythians and their kindred peoples. However, there is another point of view: the area of the Srubnaya culture is the bridgehead from which the migration of ancient Iranians to the north-west of modern Iran took place. According to this point of view, semi-nomadic cattle-breeding tribes of the Srubnaya and Andronovo cultural and historical communities represent the Iranian group of the Indo-European language family at an early stage of its development.The early and middle phases of the late Bronze Age era in Eastern Europe coincide with favorable climatic conditions – mostly wet and warm weather. There is a sharp rise in the producing forms of farming. Accordingly, in the XVIII – XIII centuries BC, there was a maximum population density in all regions of the East European steppe and forest-steppe. A log-cultural and historical community is born, which was destined to complete the tradition of the formation of great ethnocultural associations in Eastern Europe in the Bronze Age. The demographic explosion in the environment of the logging community, the peak of which occurs in the forest-steppe in the XVI – XV centuries BC, and in the steppe in the XIV – XIII centuries BC, led to the depletion of natural resources and the collapse of the log-cultural and historical community.

      Aridization (desiccation) of the climate at the end of the Bronze Age (11th – 8th centuries BC) led to the degradation and disappearance of the carcass culture.

      Changing climatic conditions for dry and cool weather, together with total overpopulation, led to disastrous consequences. The population is sharply reduced, which according to archaeological data is recorded in a decrease in the number of settlements and their cultural transformation. Carriers of the carcass cultural and historical community took a direct part in the formation of the Belozersk and Bondarikha cultures of the final stage of the Bronze Age and had a noticeable effect on the population of the forest strip of Eastern Europe in the person of the Late Pinnacle and ordered cultures.

      Pozdnyakovskaya culture, swastika pattern, SHM

      Abashevskaya culture

      By the middle of II millennium BC. e. In the forest-steppe zop of Eastern Europe, the Abashevsk cultural and historical community formed mainly of the cattle-breeding population, the monuments of which are now known on the territory from the left bank of the Dnieper in the west (the Desna and Seym basins) to the river. Tobol – in the east, and the chronological limits are determined by the second – third quarter of II millennium BC. e. The study of Abashev antiquities dates back more than 100 years (Pryakhin, 1981). Abashev culture itself was first isolated only after the excavation of prof. V.F.Smolin in 1925 of the Abashevsky burial ground in the territory of Chuvashia (Smolin, 1928; Smoline, 1927). Intensive studies of the Abashev burial grounds on the territory of the Chuvash Republic and the Mari ASSR in the post-war decades (Merpert, 1961; Halikov, Lebedinskaya, Gerasimova, 1966a) gradually outlined the idea of Abashev culture in the Middle Volga region and determined the comprehension of all Abashev antiquities (Yevtyukhov, 1964;. N., 1961; Halikov, 1966).

      People of Abashevskaya culture are mainly engaged in cattle-breeding with subordinate importance of agriculture. The herd was dominated by cattle with a significant role of small cattle. The latter is especially characteristic for the early stage of development of this population and for those groups of Abashevists who continued to maintain a certain mobility at a later time. Separate groups in the late Abashev time show a tendency to the development of settled cattle-breeding and farming (the appearance of significant long-term villages, the presence of pig bones in these settlements, an increase in the number of evidence of farming, etc.) – a whole group of the late Abashev villages in the lower reaches of the river is especially indicative. Voronezh. There are horses in the herd of this population. In the more northern regions, on the territory of the modern Mari-Chuvash Volga region, the Abashev population was more mobile and, obviously, was more involved in pastoral cattle breeding. But I must say that in this region, and even now, people have always been engaged mainly in dairy cattle breeding, which did not make them nomads. In modern Finland, agriculture is also predominantly occupied by dairy farming, which does not make them nomads. The level of development of livestock breeding has led to wide opportunities for the use of livestock by Abashevites for transport and military purposes. The latter, in turn, not only contributed to their distribution over significant territories, but also was one of the conditions for the formation of a huge cultural and historical community. Here you need to understand the specifics of cow breeding and their needs, the abundance of water and grass, and in addition, the cow loves to sit in the water in the summer, escaping from gadfly. It was among the Abashevites, especially at the late stage of their development, that disc-shaped psalms with spikes became widespread, the most impressive are two ivory-ornamented psalms from the main burial of the mound 2 of the Old Yuryevsky burial ground in the Upper Don region. The finds of such psalms record the first appearance of chariot transport in the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe (Pryakhin, 1972, p. 238; 1976 a, p. 124; Cherednichenko, 1976, p. 147 – 148; Smirnov, Kuzmina, 1977, p. 42 – 45,) The very fact of using disk-shaped psalies in the harness of chariots was undeniably confirmed during excavations