The cast disc-shaped mirror was made of bronze. On the reverse side the craftsman executed a round plaque on four pillars with a geometric pattern. This artifact was discovered among the items of the treasure trove of a caster of the Xiongnu-Sarmatian era. It was found in a suburban area in the city of Sayanogorsk in 2002.
The Russian researchers divided the contents of the treasure into four categories. They identified objects related to Scythian antiquities, objects of “Chinese” appearance, Xiongnu-Tes products, and production waste, scrap. This small mirror made of tin bronze was identified by archaeologists as an object of Tagar culture from the first category: it was dated to the Early Scythian time, or rather, the period from the 7th to the 5th century BCE.
The treasure contained four mirrors of the Tagar archaeological culture, which helped to reveal the changes in the mirror production among the Tagar. The process of creating such objects was influenced by the increased contacts of the local population with the Scythian cultural area. Along with the manufacture of disc-shaped mirrors with a loop-handle on the back, traditional for the Minusinsk Basin, new types appeared in the period from the 6th to the 5th century BCE — mirrors with a button on four legs and mirrors with a side eye, the reverse side of which was sometimes decorated with patterns.
The development of the Scythian animal style followed the line of increasing symbolization. Tagar mirror buttons of the 6th–3rd centuries BCE depicted a curled animal or a geometric pattern, often in the technique of exaggerated drawing. The motif of the solar three-bladed sign is also reflected in the decoration of bronze items and objects of the Tes culture which followed the Tagar one.
The Russian archaeologist Sergey Vladimirovich Khavrin said, “At the early Tagar stage, the main type of alloy was copper with natural impurities of arsenic and nickel. Individual items, mainly jewelry, were alloyed with a small amount of tin.” Studying the mirrors, Russian scientists came to the conclusion that they served as a source of metal in the treasure trove of the ancient caster — and not a simple one, but a high-quality, “old” one.
