Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 50 (3) 2022   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2022.50.3.049-059

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The Beginning of Iron Metallurgy in East Asia

S.P. Nesterov

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

This study focuses on the beginning of the Early Iron Age in the Far East. A revision of the published data indicates a lack of synchrony in the appearance of bronze artifacts in cultures of the Amur region and Primorye in the late 2nd to early 1st millennia BC. Iron and cast iron were widely distributed in the Urilsky and Yankovsky cultures. However, no such artifacts are known in contemporaneous cultures such as the Evoron, Siniy Gai, and Lidovka, which are attributed to the Bronze Age, whereas the earliest iron and cast iron artifacts of the Urilsky culture come from the western parts of the Amur basin. All known bronze artifacts of that culture were widely distributed during the Shang and Western Zhou stages, in Karasuk-type cultures of Southern Siberia and Central Asia of the late 2nd to early 1st millennia BC. In China, the earliest iron artifacts appeared between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, while in the provinces of eastern Liaoning and southwestern Jilin they appeared between the 4th and 1st centuries BC. Cast iron celts of the Yankovsky culture in Primorye, which in 1960s were dated to 1000-800 BC, are now believed to be no earlier than 400-200 BC, coinciding with the appearance of iron in Manchuria. It is concluded that in East Asia, iron and cast iron first appeared in the western Amur basin in 1100-900 BC.

Keywords: Western Amur region, East Asia, Bronze Age, iron, cast iron, Urilsky culture, Yankovsky culture