Metal of the Second Natukhaevskaya Hoard

The work presents the results of studying the alloy composition of metal items of the final period of the Middle Bronze Age (the Kostroma stage of metal production in the northwestern Caucasus) found near the Natukhaevskaya stanitsa in the Krasnodar krai using X-ray fluorescence. It is found that the items from the Second Natukhaevskaya hoard under study were made of low-alloy arsenic bronze, in which the arsenic content ranges from 0.37% to 1%. They can be attributed to the Kuban center of metallurgy and metalworking, which is characterized by an almost complete absence of tin in the alloy. Taking into account the items from the hoard under study, the total number of bronze sickles from the Taman and Anapa-Novorossiysk hoards already exceeds three dozen (32). This indicates that already in the final Middle Bronze Age, high-quality and carefully processed harvesting tools were being used by the population of Taman and the low-mountain coastal Black Sea region, probably when harvesting cereal crops, as well as preparing hay for the winter stall keeping of livestock.