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The paper is a publication of the Early Iron Age collection originating from the excavations of a settlement near Krasnosamarskoye village. This archaeological site is located in the forest-steppe zone on the right bank of the Samara River and it is a multi-layer settlement, whose main cultural layer belongs to the developed stage of the Srubnaya culture. The collection of the Early Iron Age includes the arrowhead and fragments of three vessels with ‘reticulate’ prints. The ceramics was studied in terms of morphology, technology, ornamentation, as well as the composition of the molding material. The arrowhead attribution and the analysis of the morphological, technological, and ornamental features of ceramics have allowed the authors to establish the dating of the Early Iron Age collection discovered near Krasnosamarskoye village as late 7th – 4th centuries BC. Perhaps, the materials from the settlement near Krasnosamarskoye village will question the traditional dating of the Gorodets complexes of the Samara Volga region of the 4th – 1st centuries BC.

The paper features the results of studying a new Bronze Age site discovered in 2019 in the Volzhsky District of Samara Oblast. The site is located between two oxbow lakes on the left bank of the Volga. The ceramic complex is represented by two cultural and chronological groups. The first group of ceramics is associated with the Srubnaya culture. Of interest are fragments of three pot-shaped vessels with a high curved neck, smoothly transitioning into a rounded body, originating from pit 23. Complexes with similar ceramics located in the Samara Volga region have not been sufficiently studied. Analogies of such ceramics have been traced both in the steppe Ivanovka culture and among the forest and forest-steppe Maklasheevka culture at its early (Atabaevo) stage. A technological analysis of the ceramics identified differences in pottery traditions among the bearers of the Srubnaya culture and the bearers of the cultures of the final stage of the Late Bronze Age. The continuity of pottery traditions from the end of the Bronze Age to the early Iron Age has been traced.

The paper describes a collection of random finds from the funds of the Borsk Museum of Local History. All of them originate from the territory of the Borsk district of the Samara region. The collection includes items from different eras. The Stone Age is represented with an item made from the elk’s horn. Unique typological characteristics of the object allow us to consider it not as an ordinary clutch, but, perhaps, as a sceptre top. The most numerous finds is a group of materials from the Bronze Age, including stone axes, a pestle, a bronze sickle, a bronze dart tip, a clay spindle and bone a bead. A morphological analysis of the axes leads to the conclusion that they belong to the Fatyanovo and Balanovo cultures and they are the earliest of this type of objects in the Samara Volga region. The tip of the dart, according to its characteristics, has analogies in the monuments of the Abashevo culture. The sickle certainly belongs to the Srubna culture. Of particular interest is the ornamented clay spindle. Similarly shaped spindles are known in the monuments of the Sintashta, Pokrovskaya and Srubna cultures, and the presence of the ornament lets suggest that this product could serve as a pommel. Quite a rare find is a large bone bead. Analogies to it are found in funerary monuments of the Pokrovskaya culture. Published materials of the Iron Age are represented by iron daggers, a sword, a spearhead and bronze arrowheads. Their typology and dating have been determined using the morphological analysis of weapons and a search for analogies in adjacent territories. The finds of the modern times include bronze combs, decorated with twin horse heads. Such metal zoomorphic combs were used by the Finno-Ugric peoples until the beginning of the 20th century. These combs possibly descend from the bronze two-horse-headed noisy pendants of the 7th –11th centuries and comb-pendants of the 8th –12th centuries.