Natural-Scientific Research of Iron Blooms from Nikolskoye Settlement
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24852/2587-6112.2025.2.192.201Keywords:
Upper Sura region, Nikolskoye settlement, Middle Ages, Golden Horde, archaeology, iron bloom, elemental compositionAbstract
This work is a continuation of natural science research aimed at studying the elemental composition of iron blooms and drawing attention to the issue of locating craft centers of their production and sources of raw materials. The article presents the results of analyses of three iron blooms from the Nikolskoye settlement, where numerous pieces of evidence of iron smelting have previously been found—iron slag, charred fragments of domestic animal bones, and pieces of chalk. Natural-scientific studies have shown that, in addition to iron, the new finds contain elements such as molybdenum, nickel, and vanadium. The same impurities were noted in iron blooms previously discovered at the Nikolskoye settlement, as well as in Novgorod iron products of the XII to XV centuries. The iron blooms apparently reached the Upper Sura region from craft centers where mass production was developed and where there was a substantial raw material base. Currently, it is not possible to determine the exact location of such a region due to the lack of data from studies of iron products from the archaeological sites of Volga Bolgaria and the Golden Horde.
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