Agriculture of the Peoples of Western Siberia in the Middle Ages (Review of Sources)

About the author:

Aleksandr A. Adamov, Cand. Sci. (Hist.), Senior Researcher, Ethnoarcheological Research Group, Tobolsk Complex Scientific Station of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; adamowaa@yandex.ru

Abstract:

This paper describes the medieval finds that originate from the forest-steppe and south taiga territories in Western Siberia and are related to husbandry. The earliest center of arable farming arose in the Upper Ob region in the middle of the first millennium A.D. Single-blade ploughshares were used there as tools, while processing tools, such as millstones, are also found. Despite the arrival of the Turkic-speaking tribes to the Upper Ob and the change of material culture in the end of the first millennium A.D., the arable farming with use of plow land cultivation remained there one of the branches of economic activities during almost the entire second millennium A.D.

Another center of arable farming originates in the Tobolsk Irtysh region as late as in the 12th-14th centuries and it is attributed to the large groups of people arrived from the Urals, who brought with them traditional land cultivation tools, multiple sown crops and tools used for crop processing. The issue of the Tatars farming in the Khanate of Sibir has been handled based on the finds from the Isker ancient settlement, whose known agricultural tools are similar to the finds of the 12th-14th centuries, that is why the issue of the agricultural tools used by the Siberian Tartars proper in the 15th-16th centuries in the middle of the Siberian Khanate is still a question.

While discussing the causes of arable farming in the Upper Ob region in the early Middle Ages, it is worth noting that the farming traditions in this territory are traced back to the Bronze Age. The local population in the area of the Tobol and Irtysh interfluve had no farming traditions discovered either in the Bronze Age or in the early Iron Age. Therefore, arable farming arose there in the 12th-14th centuries only due to the large groups of people who arrived from the Urals to the mouth of the Tobol River.

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