Kargaly

Kargaly is a copper mining-metallurgical district in the southern Urals of Russia. Prehistoric sites in Kargaly form a large and unique complex, especially when compared to neighboring metal production centers or the more distant ancient centers that emerged on the vast territory of the northern half of the Eurasian continent or supercontinent during the 5th to 2nd millennia BCE[1-8].

“Kargaly” is derived from the name of a small river known as Kargalka in the Ural "big" river basin [fig. 2]. The Kargaly district is situated in the southern Ural Mountains, within the borders of the Orenburg Administrative Region of the Russian Federation. Kargaly is located in the northern zone of the Great Eurasian steppe (the Eurasian Steppe Belt)[9, 10]. The Kargaly deposits are surrounded by typical steppe land cover, consisting of grasslands containing only an occasional small forest consisting of willow, alder, birch, and aspen trees near springs and deep ravines. More substantial forests occur 200–250 km northeast of Kargaly, where they form part of the mountainous-taiga zone of the southern Urals.

The Kargaly ore deposits cover a large, oval territory about 50 by 10 km in area. This group of deposits is oriented northwest to southeast. The two main outlying groups of mines in Kargaly both occur in the southeast corner of the ore field, at N 52' 16,186 / E 54' 36, 980 and N 52' 11, 114 / E 55' 14,848 .

Kargaly embraces an extremely vast territory (nearly 500 km sq) characterized by copper mineralization. In terms of geology, the center belongs to the category of extensive ore fields. The discovery and subsequent frequent extractions of ores at Kargaly occurred either near the end of the fourth millennium ВСЕ or at the turn of the third millennium ВСЕ (Early Bronze Age). By the second millennium ВСЕ (Late Bronze Age) this production center had reached its peak in productivity. There are an extremely large number of working mines at Kargaly, with a wide chronological range including from ancient times all the way up to the 18th to 19th centuries. The grounds contain up to 35,000 superficial manifestations, such as shafts, drifts, open casts, etc. [fig. 3]

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