Results of petrographic research of new finds from the archaeological monument Tokivske-1
Authors: Nikitenko I. S. , Starik O. V. , Marchenko V. A. 
Published: October 2019

The purpose of the work was to determine the provenance of the raw materials of ancient stone products, found during the excavations of the Bronze-Early Iron Age monument Tokivske-1, with the aim to establish connections of the ancient population of the area with residents of other regions. The archaeological monument Tokivske-1, located in the northern outskirts of the village Tokivske, Apostolove Raion, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, has been explored by the expedition of Dnipropetrovsk National Historical Museum named after D.I. Yavornytskyi since 2012. The authors of this article already carried out petrographic study of stone artefacts from this monument, which had been found during the first five years of excavations. However, over the past two years, a number of stone and other items were found that could expand our knowledge of the links of Tokivske-1 with ancient industrial centers of other regions. To carry out the petrographic analysis, six artefacts were taken, mainly those made from macroscopically different rocks. Most of them can be related to metalworking. The analyzed samples are represented by an amphibolite hammer for forging jewels or peening sheet copper, a dolerite anvil-prop for a specified hammer, a fragment of an abrasive stone made of ferruginous quartzite, a quartz tile, which is a fragment of an altar, and fragments of an anvil and a scepter-pestle made of sandstone. Petrographic analysis of artefacts allowed determining the probable provenance of their raw materials. Amphibolites are quite common in the territory of the Middle Dnipro area, but by the color of the hornblende, the predominance of epidotization processes over sericitization and macrostructural features, the studied rock is more similar to the amphibolites from the middle stream of the Bazavluk River. Dolerites, similar to the raw material of the anvil-prop, are also common in the area of excavations, and by  the presence of the micropegmatite in its composition, its origin can be localized in the middle stream of the river Bazavluk or in the valley of the river Mokra Sura. Magnetite quartzite – the raw material of the abrasive stone – most likely comes from the territory of the city of Kryvyi Rih. Quartz tile – a fragment of an altar – is a quartz vein, similar to those that intersect granites of the Tokivskyi massif directly near the village Tokivske. Sandstones, from which the anvil and the scepter-pestle were produced, appeared to be very similar in their petrographic features. They are represented by quartz sandstones with fragments of rocks and polymineral cement with the predominance of quartz regenerative and porous sericite cement. Also, the relic chalcedony and, more rarely, clay cement are present in the pores. In the territory of Ukraine, the most similar to them, according to petrographic characteristics, are the sandstones of the Carboniferous system, which crop out in the Donbas. Thus, the obtained data testifies to the connection of the Tokivske-1 archaeological complex with other parts of the Middle Dnipro area, such as the middle stream of the Bazavluk River and the Kryvyi Rih area, as well as with more distant regions such as the Donbas. It should be noted that scepter-pestles, similar to the one studied by us, are associated with metalworking, and the Donetsk basin, where the raw material of the indicated tool originates from, was the copper production center of the Late Bronze Age.