Abstract | The Serny Klyuch settlement is a unique multi-layer monument of the Ural taiga, with an area of approx. 1000 m2, containing materials from the Chalcolithic to the New Age (III millennium BC — II millennium AD). In 1989—1993 two excavations (502 m2) uncovered half of the settlement site and the remains of the defensive system. It has been established that at the beginning of the Iron Age in the upper reaches of the Ufa River on a high (20—25 m) limestone rock with three steep edges, a metallurgical center was founded, which functioned in the 5th — 2nd centuries BC. This is the westernmost monument of the Trans-Ural (Itkul’) center of metallurgy, where the largest number of adobe furnaces has been investigated (19), as well as three adobe production sites for metal processing and three industrial and residential buildings. After the first blast furnaces were erected at the northeastern end of the cliff, the village was fenced with a log defensive wall and a shallow ditch 40—42 m long on the floor, strongly sloping western side. The main purpose of the founding of seasonal settlements is the smelting of copper and the production of various products from it, including arrowheads of the Scythian-Sarmatian types — the main export weapon of the metallurgists of the Trans-Urals. Finds of iron knives, slag, and in furnace No. 13 — blanks of a knife-dagger, testify to the beginning of own production of ferrous metal in the Ural taiga around the 5th — 4th centuries BC. |