Antimony in the Bronze Age of the Caucasus and South of Eastern Europe
This article discusses the aspects of appearance, distribution and use of antimony by the Bronze Age peoples of the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. In the archaeological publications on metal production, antimony for a long time was not considered among the most ancient metals. Meanwhile, this fact ran contrary to numerous finds of antimony from Caucasian and Volga-Ural sites and the presence of antimony deposits and mines in the Caucasus of the period in question.

Owing to X-ray fluorescent analysis of a series of objects, the fact of copious presence of antimony in the post-Catacomb Lolinskaya culture in the steppe Ciscaucasian region has been established thus defining the missing link in the chain of connections which led to the appearance of antimony in the south of Eastern Europe. Subsequently, aggregate analysis of the evidence on antimony artefacts from sites of the Lolinskaya and other cultures throughout the entire area under consideration and ancient mine working of antimony in the Caucasus has resulted in the conclusion that the primary hotbed of production of antimony arose at the final phase of the Middle Bronze Age in the central zone of the Caucasus near the Main Ridge. From there, antimony casting spread quickly eastwards and southwards. As to the north, the main stream of raw antimony or products from it was directed meridionally via the centre of the Caucasus. During the Late Bronze Age, this exportation was oriented to a great extent to the Volga-Ural consumers.

Antimony production was developed in different cultures and regions. Antimony was used primarily for casting jewellery due to its physico-chemical properties and the silvery lustre of the surface. Easily available and relatively safely produced, metallic antimony, throughout the most of Caucasian and East-European regions, replaced the similar in colour copper alloys with high contents of arsenic which previously dominated in production of small cast fittings.

The spacial-geographic and cultural-chronological regularities revealed concerning the spread of antimony were directly related with the global culturogenetic processes embracing the south of Eastern Europe and Caucasus at the transitional phase between the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. The development of antimony casting by the population of the steppe Ciscaucasia was probably influenced by the southern, or rather East-Caucasian communities which partly established the Lolinskaya archaeological culture. In turn, the southern post-Catacomb cultural groups, after having become a component constituting the chariot cultures of the Volga and Volga-Ural areas, promoted the spread of antimony in these regions. Thus antimony is to be considered not only as a mark of cultural interactions in the period from the 22nd to 15th centuries cal BC, but, in addition, as a weighty argument in favour of the existence of the links between the Caucasian and Volga-Ural hotbeds of cultural genesis.