Southern Cis-Urals in the Great Migration Period – Archaeological and Geographical Context

The article considers the geography of studied archaeological sites dating back to the first half of the 1st Millennium A.D. located in the steppes of the Southern Urals and the Lower Volga region. According to the author, the localization of these sites follows a specific pattern. Barrows of late Sarmatians (or ‘Huns-Sarmatians') are mostly located in the forest-steppe area or along the left bank of the Volga river, which was accounted for by the deterioration of the steppe climate (aridization) which began in the first centuries A.D. A small number of barrows of late Sarmatians have been discovered in the Trans-Urals and the Volga region. Large burial mounds consisting of several dozen barrows - Salikhovo, Akhmerovo, Derbenevo - have only been traced in the Cis-Urals. There is no reliable evidence of the ethnic-cultural interactions of the Sarmatians with the local Finno-Ugric population. Therefore, the Turbasly culture with its sites represented by two compact groups have been discovered in the basin of the middle reaches of the Belaya river and near the mouth of the Kama river and apparently appeared in the region in an established form. At the same time, small groups (military detachments) of the population of a different ethnic and cultural origin were introduced in the western regions of the area populated by the carriers of the late Mazunino culture - barrows at Turaevo and Staraya Mushta burial mounds. Due to their scarcity, these detachments quickly dissolved in the local Finno-Perm (Mazunino) population. The archaeological map of the Southern Urals and Trans-Volga region demonstrates that the steppes of the region were very poorly populated in the first half of the 1st Millennium A.D. The ethnic-cultural groups represented by a large number of archaeological sites have only been discovered in the forest-steppe area – these are the Late Mazunino (Bakhmutino) and Imenkovo cultures, whose carriers, according to the author, did not belong to the Sarmatian or ‘Hun-Sarmatian' world.