Pages: 157-170

It is a publication of iron items (fig. 1) found during excavations of a burial mound at the village of Purcari on the right bank of the Low Dniester area (Stefan-Voda Raion, Republic of Moldova). The “deposit” was found on the North-Eastern periphery of the burial mound. It consisted of a harness objects and a spear end. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the objects shows that, first of all, it is the full set of a chariot harness meant for, most likely, four horses (a quadriga); second, the finding doubtlessly relates to the Pre-Scythian period of the early Iron Age (the so called “Cimmerian” stage). We determined a more precise absolute date within the middle or second half of VIII B.C. Besides determining the cultural and chronological situation of the complex, the article analyses some more general aspects of the Pre-Scythian problems. It seems that the most significant are two of them.  The first one is the genesis of one-ring two-part bit in general, as well as the time and the place of their technological transformation – “bronze-iron”. The second one is the problem of appearance of the chariots in Eastern Europe in the pre-Scythian epoch. As to the first problem, we came to the conclusion that the idea of one-ring two-part bit (bronze) appeared, most likely, in the eastern part of the Eurasian steppe belt (Central Asia) in X-IX c. B.C., expanding thereafter over the North Caucasus area and on the territory of the Central and North-West Iran. The Iranian findings (Hasanlu, Syalk, Dinha-tepe) show that it was here that as early as in the IX century an iron version of the one-ring two-part bit could appear for the first time. It is from here that the iron bit penetrated on the territory of the Eastern Europe (Carpathian and Dniester region) in the VIII c. B.C. The chariots, exactly as majority of the researchers believe, could be borrowed by the Cimmerians from the arsenal of the armies of the Ancient Orient (Assyria, Urartu).However, we believe that it could have happen already before the “legendary” marches of the East European nomads to the Trans-Caucasus area and Front Asia, i.e. before the year 714 B.C.
As to the status of chariots among the nomads of the North Caucasus and Black Sea region in the  pre-Scythian time, we believe that it was mainly a socially prestigious one, and far less a purely military one.