CHRONOLOGY OF THE CHALCOLITHIC AND THE EARLY BRONZE AGE IN THE URALS

Sociocultural processes in the Uralian Chalcolithic were determined both by the evolutionary changes in the local post-Neolithic societies and by the migratory activity of the southern human groups, which fact makes the cultural and historical analysis of archeological records problematic. Until recently, the chronology and periodization of the Uralian Chalcolithic were based mainly on stratigraphy, artifacts typology, and intuition. In the article, we analyze more than 150 radiocarbon dates obtained for various Ural areas and adjacent territories. The Early Chalcolithic in the VolgaUral area around the 6th/5th millenium cal BC boundary is associated with migration of human groups bearing the Syezzheye and Khvalynsk pottery traditions. In the second half of the 5th millennium cal BC, local Chalcolithic traditions were formed: Tok and Turganik of the Volga-Ural, comb and pseudo-cord of the Trans-Urals, Novoilyinskoye and GariBor of the Kama area. The Early Chalcolithic in the Northern Kazakhstan appears to be the latest.