Presentation on the topic seven prehistoric metals. History of metals Applications and types of products

The next stage in the development of human culture after the Stone Age is associated with the art of extracting metal from ore and processing it, and is therefore called the age of metals. It is divided into the oldest - bronze and the latest - iron, which began in the prehistoric era and continues today.

Humanity moved from stone tools to this highest level slowly and gradually, and the beginning of the transition should be considered the ability to cast and forge hot metal. Where there was an abundance of native copper, as in America, there, even in the Neolithic era, various products were forged from cold metal with a stone hammer or just a stone; meteoric iron was also used to make arrowheads and spears, as well as stone.

The transition from stone to bronze and iron occurred in different countries at different times and not everywhere with the same sequence. Finds in some places, for example, in pile buildings in Switzerland, in Egypt and on the Hissarlik hill, where ancient Troy was located, consistently reproduce the evolution of the Neolithic culture into the iron one, but in other places they directly pass from stone products to iron ones. Thus, in central and southern Africa, directly above the Stone Age layer lies a layer of iron culture, transferred there in ancient times, probably from Egypt. Many modern peoples who lived in the Stone Age passed directly into the Iron Age after contact with Europeans who had long been using iron. On the other hand, the prehistoric cultural era of metals is gradually moving into the historical era, the beginning of which modern science is pushing back further and further.

The first metal from which man began to make tools and weapons was copper, since in some places it is found in the earth in its native form. This use of copper was more or less continuous, depending on the area, and was the introduction to the Bronze Age. Since copper is very soft, they began to add tin to it (about 10%) and got bronze, an alloy with a golden luster and sufficient hardness. Following bronze, and perhaps even earlier, the processing of gold and silver began, but exclusively for jewelry. Products made of copper and bronze in the Old World appeared earlier in the countries of Western Asia, where both copper and tin are available, then in Egypt and later in Europe. In countries where these metals were not available, copper and bronze products penetrated through trade.

Axes and axes made of copper

All the main elements of human culture have a mutual organic connection, and changes in one of them entail changes in the material situation and the entire way of human life. This can be confirmed by archaeological finds in Swiss pile buildings.

During the transition period from stone to metal, in addition to stone products, copper tools, weapons and jewelry appear; then bronze appears, at first in small quantities, but gradually takes a dominant position. In shape, these copper and even bronze products do not differ for a long time from stone ones, but over time, they become more expedient, more varied and more elegant. Cast or blown bronze axes (celts), narrow and wide chisels for carpentry and joinery, punches for extruding patterns on metal, knives with a peg for handles, double-edged swords with sheaths, elegant pins, bracelets and other jewelry appeared. Thanks to improved metal tools, it became possible to move pile buildings further from the shore (200 - 300 m) and build larger buildings. The piles of buildings are often rectangular in shape, and their ends are well hewn. Modest stone age huts are replaced by strong and large houses that serve as shelter not only for humans, but also for domestic animals. The inventory of these dwellings, ceramic products, jewelry made of gold and amber testify to the desire of the inhabitants of these dwellings not only for comfort, but also for luxury. In addition to residential buildings, there were also workshops in which pieces of bronze, melting crucibles, molds and tools for casting and processing metal were found. In the countries of the ancient East we will find even larger and even grandiose achievements of material culture of the Bronze Age.

During this period, agriculture and cattle breeding made great strides. Hoe cultivation is replaced by cultivation with a plow to which animals are harnessed, and, thanks to this, the area of ​​cultivated land and the crops of cereals expand; In dry agricultural areas, artificial irrigation is widely used. In connection with agriculture, cattle breeding has assumed significant proportions, thus ensuring the greatest sustainability of agriculture. New breeds of cattle and horses appeared, which became more widespread, large dogs, images of which are found on Assyrian monuments, and poultry breeding began (chickens, peacocks, geese, ducks). Among the domestic animals in Egypt, a cat appeared, which enjoyed religious honor there, as a good spirit of the house; but for a long time it was limited to the borders of Egypt, not penetrating far even into Africa.

In the Bronze Age, not only river but also sea navigation arose, trade developed, money, writing, art and science appeared, peoples and states were formed and appeared on the historical stage. A significant part of the history of the ancient East takes place within the Bronze Age. In Mesopotamia, the Copper Age begins in 6000 BC. X. among the Sumirs, who laid the foundation for the high Babylonian culture, developed and supplemented by the Semites, bronze from 4000 to 1700 BC. X., when the ancient Babylonian kingdom arose and flourished. In Egypt, copper appears from 5000 along with the invasion of Semites from Asia, but bronze remains under the kings of the III-XVII dynasties (1300-1600). The cultural achievements of this period can be judged by the construction of the pyramids (III-V dynasties) and other monuments of ancient Egypt. The history of the Jews, starting with Abraham (2000 BC), and the Phoenician sailors, the inventors of our alphabet, dates back to the Bronze Age. From the end of the 3rd millennium to 1250 BC. X. on the island of Crete and the shores of the Aegean Sea is developing, discovered thanks to the research of the Englishman Evans and other archaeologists, the Cretan or Aegean culture, amazing in its achievements in the field of technology and art. Under its influence, the Greek bronze culture arose (from 2500 BC), the end of which coincides with the time of the appearance of Homer’s poems. In India and China, archaeological finds from the Neolithic, Copper and Bronze Ages are known, but their chronology could not be established. Bronze came to Japan around 1500 BC. X., iron - about 700 BC. X. In America (Mexico and Peru) the natives were not familiar with iron and used copper and bronze tools, without parting with stone ones. In addition, they used tin, lead, gold and silver for alloys (Peruvian bronze contains 5%-10% silver). The types and shape of American bronzes correspond to European ones. The achievements of the American bronze culture were quite high, but still it was inferior to the Old World, since it did not have domestic animals (with the exception of the llama) and was limited to hoe farming.

Iron appeared in Egypt and Assyro-Babylonia around 1500 BC. X., in Europe a little later (at the end of the second millennium BC).

In the Homeric era, iron was rare and was used only for decoration and only from the 6th century BC. X. in Europe it finally replaces bronze. The reason for the late appearance of iron not only in Europe, but also in the more cultured East, is the difficulty of its extraction and processing. Iron melts only at a temperature of 1600° C. and is difficult to separate from the ore. The oldest iron is soft and contains a lot of slag, later it becomes better, and the Romans learned to turn it into steel. Iron was smelted in closed clay furnaces, where layers of ore alternated with layers of charcoal, and the metal was collected in crucibles at the bottom of the furnace.

After the furnace cooled, the iron blanks entered further processing.

The beginning of the Iron Age in Europe is called the Hallstatt period (1000 -500 BC), and the subsequent period, when iron finally replaced bronze and came into full use, is called La Tène.

The Iron Age in Europe, first of all, paved its way in Italy, where, in addition to the Latins, from the 8th century. Greek colonists began to settle, and around 900 BC. X. settled by the mysterious Etruscan people, stocky, dark-skinned, short in stature, who did not resemble either the Greeks or the Romans in appearance or language. It is believed that the homeland of the Etruscans is Asia Minor and the northern islands of the Aegean Sea. Etruscan antiquities (paintings, vessels, bronze and iron products, ruins of fortifications, temples, etc.) testify to the high level of Etruscan culture, which influenced the Romans.

The Etruscans and the Greeks in their service were skilled craftsmen in the manufacture of bronze and iron products. The Etruscans fought with the Romans for a long time, and iron played an important role in this fight: the Etruscan king Porsenna, having defeated the Romans, ordered them not to process iron.

A complete picture of the high level of culture in the first period of the European Iron Age is provided by archaeological finds in Hallstatt, in the vicinity of which salt mines were developed since ancient times, which served as a source of prosperity for the inhabitants of this area. More than a thousand graves were explored there (1846 to 1886), in which a wide variety of things were placed along with the corpses. There are occasional stone items, many bronze items, but iron items predominate. Swords and daggers (with bronze handles), arrow and spear tips, axes, knives, chisels and other tools are made from iron. Very elegant jewelry and vessels made of bronze, clay vessels, made by hand, beautifully shaped, covered with graphite or painted ornaments and designs. All these finds indicate a high cultural level of the population, developed technology, a desire for luxury and indicate distant trade relations with the north (amber) and south (items in the Italian and Greek styles).

La Tène products mark the full advance of the Iron Age in Western and Central Europe and its culture, which spread from Gaul to Germany. These products are technically superior to those from Hallstatt and reveal more of a desire for practicality than for luxury. Iron tools in the La Tène period became absolutely necessary, and they were paid for with coins, the coinage of which was an imitation of Greek and Roman coins. In pottery, a machine and pottery kilns appear. Fortified cities grew up in Gaul, behind whose thick walls the population took refuge in houses made of mud brick.

In Eastern Europe in the north, the so-called Bronze and Iron Ages, which are different from Western Europe, dominate. Ural-Altai style, and in the south - Scythian (mounds), reflecting Greek influence.

We became acquainted with the emergence and development of primitive culture, the achievements of which have an undoubted connection with the present and are the starting points of the cultural path of modern humanity. This path was long and thorny, on which some peoples died or fell behind, while others went far ahead. The closer to our time, the faster and more friendly the ego movement becomes; drawing in those who are lagging behind. The history of human culture, as we know it, covers a relatively short period of time and opens up immense prospects for humanity. Both the most ancient and the newest cultural peoples, if we consider their history from the point of view of the antiquity of the human race in general, represent only tiny shoots on the ancient trunk of humanity, the roots of which are lost in the depths of the most distant periods of the life of the earth. And these centuries in the life of the earth are again only short moments in comparison with those millions of years in which the development of the universe continued.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that metals are present in any sphere of human activity. They are everywhere. Cutlery, many tools, cars, railways - all these are achievements of mankind that were achieved thanks to metals and their alloys. Metals have been used for many thousands of years, and since ancient times those who knew how to handle metal and make various tools from it were valued.

As evidence, I would like to cite one parable that tells about the real importance of persons who “own” metal:

Upon completion of the construction of the Jerusalem Temple, King Solomon decided to glorify the best builders and invited them to the palace. He even gave up his royal throne for the duration of the feast to the best of the best - the one who did especially a lot for the construction of the temple.

When the invitees arrived at the palace, one of them quickly ascended the steps of the golden throne and sat down on it. His action caused amazement to those present.

Who are you and by what right did you take this place? - the angry king asked menacingly.

The stranger turned to the mason and asked him:

Who made your instruments?

Blacksmith - he answered.

The man sitting turned to the carpenter, joiner:

Who made your instruments?

“Blacksmith,” they answered.

And everyone to whom the stranger addressed answered:

Yes, the blacksmith forged our tools with which the temple was built.

Then the stranger said to the king:

I'm a blacksmith. King, you see, none of them could have done their work without the iron tools I made. This place rightfully belongs to me.

Convinced by the blacksmith’s arguments, the king said to those present:

Yes, the blacksmith is right. He deserves the greatest honor among the builders of the temple...

In ancient times The blacksmith's activity was not only metal processing. The work of a blacksmith included the entire chain from ore mining to finished product creation. And this implied the presence of enormous knowledge and skills. Therefore, the profession of a blacksmith has always been held in high esteem. And even one of the Finnish proverbs notes that you are not supposed to speak to a blacksmith on a first-name basis. Blacksmithing knowledge was most often passed on from generation to generation. And in many historical films you can see the blacksmith’s father and children scurrying around the father, wanting to try themselves in business.

Great philosopher of Ancient Rome Titus Lucretius Carus in the 1st century BC wrote:

“Formerly, powerful hands, claws, teeth, stones, fragments of tree branches and flames served as weapons, after the latter became known to people. After that, copper and a type of iron were found. Still, copper came into use before iron. Since it was softer, and much more abundant, the soil was plowed with a copper tool, and the copper brought the battle into confusion, scattering severe wounds everywhere. Livestock and fields were stolen with the help of copper, because everything unarmed and naked obeyed the weapon little by little. to forge iron. The sight of weapons from copper began to arouse contempt in people. At this time, they began to cultivate the land with iron, and in a war with an unknown outcome, they began to equalize their strength."

This scripture clearly shows us the division of all human history into periods: the Stone, Copper and Iron Ages. In the first half of the 19th century, scientists K. Thomsen and E. Vorso added one more item to this list. As a result, we see what many have known since school:

STONE AGE

COPPER AGE

BRONZE AGE

IRON AGE

A time when a person used what was at hand in his activities. Stones, bones, wood and other materials provided by nature were used. Over time, man learned to process these tools. As a result, their beneficial properties improved. The stones were of greatest importance. The person immediately realized how useful they were. If at first the stones were used in their usual form, then gradually people learned to chip them, thereby improving the efficiency of this tool. And after some time, the stones began to be drilled, ground and polished, giving them additional advantages. Without exaggeration, stone has played one of the most important roles in the everyday life of mankind for hundreds of years.

covers approximately the period from IV to III millennium BC. At this time, the active use of copper begins. In the book by R. Malinova and Y. Malin "A Leap into the Past: An Experiment Reveals the Mysteries of Ancient Eras" it is suggested that copper accidentally fell into the hands of a person along with the stones that he used. Since copper and gold are found in nature in native form more often than, for example, silver and especially iron, then the first metals with which man became acquainted were copper and gold. It was from them that our ancestors began to make jewelry and various tools. The first copper products were made using ordinary blows. But these objects were soft and fragile, so they quickly broke and became dull. A lot of time has passed, but our ancestors found out that when exposed to high temperatures, copper begins to melt and turns into a fluid substance that can take any shape. Having got the hang of it, man was able to create really sharp tools suitable for sharpening. And even if the tool broke, nothing prevented it from being melted down into a new object. The first experiments with copper served as the beginning for the development of metallurgy and blacksmithing. Thousands of years later, man began to use not only pure metals, but also metal-containing ores. Scientists still cannot answer the question of how man came to begin extracting metals from ore stones. All you can hear around is speculation. However, this made it possible to increase the productivity of metal products.

Continuing to experiment, our ancestors invented closed oven. And to increase the temperature inside the furnace, they came up with a system for supplying the oxygen necessary for this. Initially it was a natural air flow, but over time it was developed artificial air system. For the same purposes it began to be used charcoal, which has huge calorific value.

At one point, the experiments of our ancestors made it possible to obtain a new metal. An alloy of copper and tin made it possible to create bronze. This marked the beginning of a new era - Bronze Age. According to scientists, bronze became known to mankind in 3500 BC Our ancestors obtained tin by smelting it from stone - cassiterite. Tin its properties are soft and fragile, but in combination with copper, the result is a metal much harder than copper. Having arrived at more advanced knowledge in the field of metallurgy, our ancestors began to make tools from bronze. This made it possible to make another push forward in the development of humanity.

And at some point man began to use iron. Its active use in metallurgy began approximately from 1200 BC e. before 340 AD e. The reasons that led to such a late development of this metal are as follows. Firstly, The melting point of iron is quite high, and it was impossible to achieve such degrees in old metallurgical furnaces. The second reason, and perhaps the most important one, is that iron itself is not such a hard metal. Only when man experimentally reached the “alloy” of iron and carbon did the active use of iron in the manufacture of tools begin, because exactly this connection made it possible to give iron competitive hardness.

The most ancient method of obtaining iron is considered cheese-making process. When iron was obtained from ore in small furnaces, created at first in the ground. This method is called cheese-making due to the fact that air was supplied to the furnace through blowing in cold “damp” atmospheric air. This process did not allow achieving
the melting temperature of iron is 1537 degrees, and was kept at the maximum level 1200 degrees, which made it possible to create an atmosphere of iron smelting. After heat treatment, iron was concentrated in dough-like form at the bottom of the oven, forming shout(iron spongy mass with particles of unburned charcoal and slag impurities). From the kritsa, which was extracted in a red-hot form, it was possible to do something, only after cleaning from toxins and eliminating sponginess. For this purpose, cold and hot forging was carried out, which consisted of periodically calcining the kritsa and forging it. As a result, blanks were created that could be used to create iron products. The whole process, as you noticed, is quite complex and time-consuming, which is why iron began to be used in metallurgy so late. And even today, in the age of high technology, iron processing has changed a lot, but the main thing is that this metal remains the main material in all spheres of human life.

Metal mining and processing

There is no doubt that the Slavs knew the basic metals, namely gold, copper, silver, tin and iron, already in the era of their unity. Gold, copper and tin have been known in Central and Northern Europe since the end of the third millennium BC. e., and iron - from the end of the second millennium, although the Iron Age itself begins several centuries later. Under such conditions, it is impossible for these metals to remain unknown to the Slavs of the Carpathian region. This is also confirmed by the data of Indo-European comparative linguistics. Although only two words - “copper” and “silver” (the Slavic form of which is lost) - have a common form (Sanskrit. ?yas, Avest. ayah, Lat. aes, Gothic aiz, Old Indian raj?tam, Avest. erezatam, Armenian arcath, lat. argentum, ancient Iranian argat), but the presence of such words as “gold”, “silver”, “tin” and “iron” among the Slavs is evidenced by terms common to the terms of the Germans or Balts:

glory iron; Prussian gelso; lit. gel?is; latv. dzelzs;

glory gold; latv. zelts; Goth. gulp;

glory silver; lit. sid?bras; Goth. silubr;

glory tin; Prussian alvis; latv. alva; lit. alvas.

On this basis, the common Slavic names for gold, silver, tin and iron can be considered ancient, proto-Slavic, and, therefore, these metals have long been known to the Slavs. Only instead of the ancestral ajos, the Slavs adopted a different name - copper, however, is also ancient, since it is a common Slavic term, attested in ancient texts. Slavic word ore equally ancient, since already in the era of Indo-European primitiveness it passed from Sumerian urudu to the Finns and neighboring Indo-Europeans. But the Slavic names of tin ( cin) and brass ( mosaz) are borrowed from the German language.

Rice. 81. Anvil with pincers from the city of Vlaslav (according to J.L. Pichu)

Direct evidence of the mining and processing of metals by the Slavs can be given, of course, only from the historical era. Also, archaeological evidence is very numerous and indisputable only from the second half of the first millennium AD. e. The metal objects found in settlements and burials of that era were partly received by the Slavs from foreign countries through trade, and partly they were made by themselves, extracting the metal themselves, especially since the time of the settlement of the Slavs throughout their historical lands, where they occupied old abandoned mines or opened new. In particular, there was enough gold in some rivers, as well as in the clayey strata of the Czech Republic, Moravia, Silesia, Artemisia and Pomerania, and mainly in the old Roman mines of Hungary, Semigrad and the Balkan Peninsula, where Slavs appeared everywhere in the 6th and 7th centuries. However, most of the gold was still delivered from abroad; Thus, it was brought to Rus' from the Urals and Altai, from the territory of the Akmola and Semipalatinsk regions, as well as silver, which abounds in Russian finds of the 10th and 11th centuries. There is also a lot of silver in neighboring Asia Minor, Armenia and Persia. But the southern and western Slavs at that time had enough of their own silver, especially in the Czech and Polish lands, where many ancient mines were known in which silver was mined. During the production of silver (from galena), lead was also produced, which often served as an alloy for the bronze of that time, as well as along with tin, a metal that imitates silver. The presence of tin in the Czech Republic in the 10th century (apparently from mines in the Ore Mountains) confirms Ibrahim Ibn Yaqub. But along with this, an alloy of tin and copper - bronze - was one of the items imported to the Slavic lands. The appearance of bronze at the end of the pagan period is little known to us, and there is relatively little of it, since at that time silver predominated among the Slavs. Copper came to Russia mainly from the mines of the Urals and Khorasan, and along with it, in all likelihood, finished bronze. The production of copper among the Slavs was insignificant. Most of all, the Slavs were engaged in iron smelting. Iron was mined from ore deposits of limonite, magnetite and hematite, which were available in sufficient quantities in all Slavic lands, and smelted in smelters - small furnaces made of clay, used in the Czech Republic and Poland already in the pre-Roman era; in these furnaces they produced either malleable iron or steel, which, of course, was not entirely pure, so it then had to be processed by forging.

Rice. 82. Iron and copper cauldrons 1, 2 - from a burial near the village of Syaznigi on the river. Pasha; 3, 4 - from Gnezdovo.

Metal processing was carried out in two main ways: forging cold or hot metal and casting molten metal into molds. We find both of these techniques among the ancient Slavs.

Although there are no historical reports about metal casting, this process is evidenced by numerous finds of cast items, primarily jewelry. Few foundry molds were found, and they are not of great interest. But blacksmithing is attested not only by a variety of tools and weapons, but also by the mention of historical sources about blacksmiths (fabri, fabri armorum), in addition, by the antiquity of the word forge and words derived from it ( kov, kovach, koval etc.), as well as finds of blacksmith tools in Slavic settlements. An anvil with large pincers was found at the site of Vlaslav near Trzebenec in the Czech Republic.

The items produced by forging were, firstly, various household tools and objects: scythes, sickles, saws, axes, hammers, pliers, nails, chains, locks, keys, bells, etc., then various weapons, o which we will discuss in detail in Chapter XI. This also includes a number of vessels: large cauldrons made of iron and copper for hanging over the fire (several such cauldrons of various shapes were found in Russian graves) and more finely made metal jugs and goblets, which, however, almost without exception are products of foreign production, came to the Slavic lands through trade, and gold and silver vessels simply as gifts. The barbarian princes received similar gifts from the Byzantine emperors. There are very few local Slavic imitations of these things, and they date back to a later time. The oldest of them is a clay imitation found near Kostritsy and kept in the museum in Gera.

Rice. 83. Silver cup from a burial in Taganch near Kanev

Rice. 84. Clay Slavic bowl from Kostritsa near Gera

If the Slavs of the 10th and 11th centuries lagged behind in the manufacture of metal utensils, the same cannot be said about fine jewelry in general. In this regard, the Slavs reached already known heights of skill.

Until the 10th century, it is impossible to talk about the development of jewelry production among the Slavs. Their ancestral home was a land of trade routes and artistic influences. Only when they penetrated the Danube, the Balkan Peninsula and the Black Sea and found themselves in close proximity to Roman and Greek cities, when they constantly had before their eyes a lot of jewelry made in the local workshops, only from that time do we have reason to believe that the Slavs began to desire to have such jewelry and imitate them. But for a long time we do not find confirmation of the results of this endeavor either in written sources or in archeology. It is possible that, for example, some types of rough brooches of the so-called Gothic type, found in the center of Russia, were made in Slavic workshops on the Dnieper or Oka, but this cannot be proven. Only starting from the 10th century can we trace the existence of gold and silversmiths among the Slavs and talk about the development of Slavic gold-processing production.

Rice. 85. Bracelet and rings from St. Petersburg and Gdov burial mounds (according to A. Spitsin)

The beginning of this development is associated in the West with the flourishing of this branch of production in Germany and France during the era of Charlemagne and his successors, and in the East with the close communication of the Slavs with Asia and the Byzantine Empire during the time of Prince Vladimir. So, for example, we read in legends that even the Czech prince Wenceslas summoned aurifices et argentarios from foreign countries, wanting to decorate the Prague church, but already in the 11th century Czech documents mention Czech goldsmiths with Slavic names: “qui toreumata facit, Nema " - "aurifex Coiata" (1046), "Prowod aurifex et filius eius" (1185); in addition, "artifices auri et argenti" are mentioned in Polish documents of the 12th and 13th centuries. It is not known whether the wonderful decorations and weapons of the idols of the Pomeranian and Ruyan gods were made by Slavic or foreign craftsmen, but there is no doubt that the heads of these, as well as the Russian idols, covered with gold and silver, which Vladimir placed on the Kiev hill, could not have been made by Christian goldsmiths Greek or Roman origin. About the Balkan district we know that Archbishop Lawrence of Spalato in 1060 sent a man to Antioch to study goldsmithing there, and in another charter dating back to 1080, Grubiz aurifex is mentioned, whose name is Slavic. The presence of famous jewelry workshops in Rus' in the 10th and 11th centuries is confirmed by excavations. Grand Duke Vladimir brought the first church items for the Kyiv church in 988 from Korsun (Kherson), and also called craftsmen from Greece; these masters created permanent workshops in Kyiv, thereby laying the foundation for the Slavic jewelry school. Similar workshops appeared again in Veliky Novgorod, Ryazan, Suzdal (here, in particular, jewelry craftsmanship reached a tremendous flowering in the 12th and 13th centuries, craftsmen from various lands came here), Vladimir and Chernigov. Already in 996, we read in the chronicle that Vladimir ordered the casting of silver spoons for his entire squad. This is due to the fact that among the numerous jewelry found in Russian graves and settlements of the 10th–12th centuries, some of the things are undoubtedly Slavic in nature, for example, some types of necklaces, bracelets, rings, mainly earrings and temple rings, which we have already considered above, in Chapter IV (p. 239). This material contains obvious Slavic counterfeits of other people's samples, for example, Byzantine enamel. Finally, the Kiev archaeologist V. Khvoiko found on the site of the ancient Kyiv city near the Church of the Tithes the remains of a jewelry workshop with crucibles in which melted enamel remained.

Rice. 86. Elements of embossed ornament

The technique of jewelry making was that the basic form of the decoration was prepared either on a small anvil using thin tools, or cast in a mold with a rough, sharply protruding pattern. Subsequent finer surface processing was carried out using special techniques that were of foreign origin, but quickly spread among the Slavs with the beginning of the development of their jewelry craft.

Rice. 87. Silver jewelry from a treasure found in Rudelsdorf near Niemcze in Silesia

The most favorite jewelry technique of the Slavs became filigree two types. In the first of them, the surface was decorated with patterns made using soldered twisted wire or a chain; the second type consisted of decorative lines and figures, most often triangles made from small soldered grains (filigrane granul? - granulated filigree). Both species were known both in southern Europe and in the East. They appeared in Central Europe in the La Tène era, and from there, in the Roman era (even earlier in the east of the Black Sea), filigree objects began to penetrate to the Slavs. But filigree became most widespread only in the 9th–12th centuries, when a lot of jewelry and other expensive things were imported into the Slavic lands from Byzantium and the East, on which filigree, especially granulation, was a very common decorative technique for ornamentation on silver or gold. The decorations that appear in the numerous silver hoards accompanying Kufic coins from the 9th and 10th centuries are all, without exception, finished with grain or fine wirework. The Slavs liked these latter so much that they not only bought and wore this kind of jewelry, but also imitated them, or rather, made the same jewelry again. For the most part, these are various temple rings and earrings (see about them above, on page 241) - partly of Slavic origin, partly of foreign origin. These foreign ornaments, distinguished by their unusually fine workmanship, were made somewhere in western Asia, at a point still unidentified, probably in Samarkand.

Rice. 88. Treasure of jewelry covered with filigree and niello, found in Spassky district of Kazan province (according to A. Spitsin)

Along with filigree soldered to the surface, the technique is often found on Slavic objects of that time embossed ornament, when the surface was decorated with dots, circles, crosses, triangles, stars, applied to the metal using punches. This technique, also of foreign, most likely Gallo-Germanic origin, became widespread in the German lands starting from the Roman era, and from here it penetrated, along with Scandinavian craft products, to the Eastern Slavs in the north of Rus'. It is less common in other places.

Techniques that gave the decoration multicolor also gained great popularity among the Slavs; These include, in addition to the widespread conventional method of covering the surface of an object with another metal, mainly gold, the technique of inlaying with precious stones and glass, the so-called. verroterie cloisonn?e, then coating with enamels and another type of inlay, the so-called. tausia (gold and silver patterns on steel products) and niello - all these techniques are again of foreign origin, but they became more or less widespread in Slavic industry in the 10th–12th centuries.

Verroterie cloisonnée was least widespread among the Slavs, since its heyday had already passed by the time the Slavs began to engage in jewelry making. These ancient ornaments, the first examples of which we encountered already in ancient Egypt and Chaldea, and later in Persia and Turkestan, where colored precious stones were found in abundance everywhere, penetrated into Greek art, which in the last centuries of our era created things inlaid with precious stones ( garnets, turquoise) or amber and glass for the barbarians of southern Russia. Here, mainly in the workshops of Panticapaeum, in the 3rd–4th centuries AD. e. The beginning of a new type of jewelry industry was laid, which created a special style with the help of this inlay, which spread throughout Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries and persisted until the 8th century - the so-called Gothic, or Merovingian, style. Individual jewelry decorated in this style ended up in that era in areas inhabited by the Slavs, which is quite natural and is confirmed by finds. In general, this style did not become widespread among the Slavs. There are no reports about it, and in the graves of the Slavic lands there are very few things inlaid in this way, although the Slavs loved glass and they always had numerous necklaces made of glass beads.

Rice. 89. Bronze cross with Russian enamel from Bila Tserkva (Vasilkovsky district, Kyiv province)

Much more widespread and caused numerous imitations among the Slavs was another ornamentation, which also attracted the Slavs with its multicoloredness, but was performed using a different technique, namely the technique of enamels. As for the era of antiquity, here we distinguish two methods of coating with enamel: cloisonné enamel, when the molten glass mass was poured between partitions made of wire soldered on the surface of the metal, and champlevé enamel, which was poured into holes made on the surface. Enamel was also invented in the East. In Egypt, enamel was used at least as early as the Ptolemaic era (more ancient things were decorated only with glass plates inserted in a cold state), and possibly even earlier. Obviously, from here the enamel technique penetrated into Europe, most likely to Massilia (Marseille), Gaul and then to Italy, where such things were made in large quantities in the 1st–4th centuries AD. e. for barbarian peoples. Later, Byzantium borrowed the enamel technique from the East (Persia) and achieved remarkable results in this area in the 10th and 11th centuries, while in the rest of Europe only in some places minor remains of Roman enamels were preserved. Enamel also penetrated to the Slavs, where it gained considerable popularity. From German workshops on the Rhine and in the upper reaches of the Danube, in all likelihood, come the so-called Ketlach enamels, very popular in the 8th and 9th centuries among the Slavs of the Alpine lands; from the Prussian-Lithuanian workshops, in turn, barbarian enamel of the Moshchin type came to Russia in the 5th–7th centuries; In addition, from Byzantine workshops, samples of enamels arrived in the main Russian cities and the Caucasus, where everywhere in the 11th and 12th centuries they evoked more or less successful imitations in the production of gold jewelry (crosses, encolpions, tiaras, earrings, breastplates with images of saints, etc. called barm, etc.). In Kyiv, as I already said, V.V. Khvoiko also found a workshop of that time that produced enamel. An example of Russian craftsmanship is the enamel helmet of Prince Yaroslav from approximately 1200 and the cross from Bila Tserkva in the Kiev region (Fig. 89).

Rice. 90. Earrings and buckles with Ketlah type enamel from Slavic graves in Krungla (according to O. Fischbach)

Compared to the enamel technique, the last two techniques remain far behind: gilding and niello, the technique of which consists in applying a blackened pattern (niello) on a smooth gold or ordinary silver surface, or applying a silver or gold pattern (tausia) on an iron surface. We find both of these techniques in abundance in Roman production of the imperial era, especially in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. e. The gilding technique, which reached such significant development among the Germans in the 6th and 8th centuries, did not become widespread among the Slavs at all, with the exception of the Balkan Peninsula, where it survived until historical times. The mob imitated more, but not the Roman, but the Byzantine and Eastern 10th and 11th centuries. In Russia, rabble was used later.