Metal Production of Andronovo Communities and Farmers of Central Asia and Iran: Stages of Development and Search for Interactions

The article examines late 3rd and 2nd millennia BC mining and metallurgy across vast territory of Central Eurasia, inhabited by Andronovo pastoralists and Central Asia farmers. We provide chronological framework for the emergence and evolution of mining techniques (exploitation of various horizons of the oxidation zone of volcanic massive sulfides, copper porphyry, skarn and copper sandstone deposits, the use of specialized mines), appearance of arsenic bronze, tin bronze, and iron. Despite local peculiarities, mining and metallurgy passed through similar consecutive developmental stages in Central Eurasia. Archaeological data suggest that in the Late Bronze Age, Andronovo communities settled southwards from the steppes of Northern Eurasia to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. They played a major role in the spread of tin bronze and the exploitation of tin mines in Central Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. So far, there is only indirect evidence of contacts between Andronovo communities and people of the Iranian Highlands. The most promising sites that may yield such evidence are those of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex in northeastern Iran. Mineralogical and geochemical research methods help to assess the technological features of metallurgy and to discover ore sources; however, the interaction between Bronze Age communities can be explored only through archaeological and typological studies of sites and artifacts.