Description:
Based on the analysis of newly-found hoards and individual artifacts, the article looks into studies of
ancient metallurgy of the Eneolyth – Bronze Age of the Upper Dniester region.
Trypilian metallurgists started using copper-bearing sandstones of the Dniester at least from stage BI.
Those sandstones and the copper of Volyn served as the basis for local metallurgy of the Middle and Late
Trypillya, as well as for the metallurgy of the eastern parts of the Funnel Beaker culture and the Volyn
Lubelsky Painted Ware culture.
The new materials, presented in the article, show that the Carpathian Volyn metallurgy center of the
Early Bronze Corded Ware culture, which we identified earlier, had been formed in the Dniester region
based on the metallurgy of the Trypillya culture. In the Early Bronze Age, its south-eastern part (primarily
in the Yampol Cult Center area) was used by populations of the Yamna and the Catacomb cultures.
The local metallurgy continued in the Middle and Late Bronze Age by populations of the Babyno,
Komarivka, Noua, Gava-Goligardy, and Chornyi Lis cultures. Obviously, the Dniester copper deposits
continued to be utilized in the Early Iron Age and the Middle Ages.
