Kosar (also a sickle , cleaver , sickle-cleaver ) of the pine-Mazin type (according to the Sosnovo-Mazinsky treasure from the Middle Volga region) is a bronze weapon, the most common in the late Bronze Age . All the names of these tools are not original, but given by the researchers. The mower has a wide blade with a humpback butt, decorated with a thickened side. At the slightly narrowed rear end is one small round or less often triangular hole. It differs from ordinary bronze sickles with a straight blade, the absence of a hook handle or a pair of holes for attaching a wooden handle. And unlike the sickle-shaped knives, the mowing point is not suitable for applying at least some stabbing blow. But bronze sickles with one hole at the end are known, and the mower, in a rare case, has a short elongation with two holes in the back, something like a handle.
Content
Distribution and similar species
Kosari are massively represented in treasures and singly in the Bronze Age carcass culture, as well as in the cultures of the Andronovo cultural mass: Yelovskaya [1] and Irmenian cultures. Also in the Karasuk culture [2] there are knives with similar blades, but with simple cast metal handles. Mowing finds are also found in Central Asia. In the early Iron Age, mowers were no longer used, with the exception of the territory of the Minusinsk and Kansk hollows and belonging to the Karasuk and Tagar cultures. They are distinguished by a larger bend of the butt than the Andronovskys and a concave blade. One discovered specimen of the Central Asian mowers has a completely rounded front part and a larger rear opening than usual. Perhaps, a tool from China functionally close to mowers, on the contrary, has a straight butt with a very rounded front blade and an artistically decorated metal handle located at an angle to the butt. [3]
Purpose
The purpose of the mowers is not fully understood. Known finds are considered semi-finished products, as they do not have handles that may need to be welded. According to one of the assumptions, they were used for clearing land from small shoots or as sickles [4] . According to another version, these tools must be somehow connected with livestock breeding, as they were common among herders [5] . There is an opinion about the combat as well as the universal purpose of these blades.
Perhaps these guns should not have been equipped with handles. On all-metal knives and razors of the mentioned cultures, single holes are always located at the rear end of the handle, that is, they served to attach a lanyard or some kind of suspension. Similarly, mowers could be finished goods with holes at the rear end. In this case, the handle can be just a narrower rear end, the end of which, moreover, as well as the butt, covers the thickening-side. Even the entire butt of the product (like that of an ulu knife) could serve as a handle.
Iron Age Tools
Kosar is an iron tool used to harvest the early Iron Age in Eastern Europe. It had a different shape of the cutting edge: approximately straight, slightly or strongly bent. It is assumed that it was used in slashing agriculture , especially options with a more straight blade, which are more convenient for collecting rare ears planted in pits. [6]
See also
- Kama (sickle)
- Stone knife sickle
- Cleaver
- Sickle
Notes
- ↑ Kosarev M.F. Bronze Age of Western Siberia. - M .: Nauka, 1981. - Fig. 59, 2. - 282 s.
- ↑ Karasuk culture. - Fig. 1 // Great Soviet Encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia 1969-1978 .
- ↑ Soft I.V. Crescent knives of the prehistoric era of the East European Plain, Central Asia and Siberia. - 2012
- ↑ Artsikhovsky A.V. Fundamentals of archeology. - M.: State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1955 . - S. 78.
- ↑ Kuzmina E.E. Metal products of the Eneolithic and Bronze Age in Central Asia // Archaeological sources. - M .: Nauka, 1966. - Issue. B4-9 . - S. 54-56, 140.
- ↑ Gusakov M. G. Slash farming in the Iron Age in Eastern Europe // Man and Antiquities: A Collection of the Memory of Alexander Alexandrovich Formozov (1928-2009) / Comp .: M.V. Andreeva , S.V. Kuzminykh , T.N. Misha Repl. ed. I.S. Kamenetsky, A.N. Sorokin . - M .: Grif and K, 2010 .-- S. 497, 500, 503, 505. - 918 p. - ISBN 978-5-8125-1501-0 .