HOW TO BECOME A CASTLER? (MOBILITY OF THE ABASHEVO POPULATION BASED ON THE MATERIALS FROM THE PEPKINO MLDDLE BRONZE AGE KURGAN)
The kurgan near the village of Pepkino in the Gornomariysky District, Mari El Republic, which contained a grave of 27 young men buried at the same time has been considered one of the key sites of the Middle Volga Abashevo archaeological culture for a long time. This paper is aimed at describing individual mobility of the Pepkino Abashevo population group in the context of new data on the geochemical situation in the Middle Volga Region. Comparison of strontium isotope ratio in the dental and bone tissues serves to establish the mobility level of a specific individual in his lifetime. Analysis of control samples (mollusk shells, soil, water and plants) from the locality where the remains of this individual have been found is a necessary part of the study carried out to understand the local geochemical situation. During our research a mass-spectrometric study of 29 samples, including control samples of soil and Gastropoda snail shells collected in five localities of the Middle Volga Region, was carried out. The study found that most Pepkino Abashevo people were non-locals in the Gornomariysky District and that they had lived in the locality with isotope signals of 0,710 until roughly the age of ten. Most of these individuals spent their adolescence years in the radiogenic conditions consistent with the pattern identified for the Middle Volga Region (0,712-0,728). It was established that after reaching the age of ten, the individual who later became a coppersmith-bronze castler separated from the core group and lived in the geochemical environment with the isotope signal of 0,708 for several years.