Mikhailovka Ovsyanka is a large, complex mining site located near a natural ravine that exposed azurite-rich sandstone rock.

ADD PHOTOS OF MIKHAILOVKA OVSYANKA

The Mikhailovka Ovsyanka copper mine and associated Srubnaya settlement was located in the steppes 60km to the south of the Samara River valley. Another copper vein was exposed in sandstone in the northern part of the Samara oblast near the Kibit settlement, excavated by Dave Peterson and Laura Popova in a project that grew out of the Samara Valley Project. These two Srubnaya-phase copper mines show that copper ores were widespread in the middle Volga region and were worked at a variety of scales. Chernykh's excavations at Gorny in Orenburg oblast, east of the Samara oblast, exposed a truly enormous Srubnaya copper mine, but excavations in the Samara oblast showed that Gorny was not the only Srubnaya copper mining operation in the southern Ural steppes. A handful of smaller mines operated at a variety of scales. How the large-scale operation at Gorny was related to these smaller-scale mines is an open question.

Mikhailovka Ovsyanka was excavated by a separate Russian team, and yielded two dates of about 1500-1400 calBC, significantly later than our period of interest, and contemporary with the latest dated Srubnaya mining phase at Gorny.

We dated just two samples taken from exposed Srubnaya settlement profiles there, one on charcoal from the bottom of a V-shaped roasting or smelting pit. The mine could have started earlier, during our period of interest.