This former study of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolayevna, one of the daughters of Nicholas I, was redecorated by Andrei Stakenschneider in the mid-1850s.
The display here is made up of items from the Bronze and early Iron Ages (2nd – mid-1st century BC) that were found during excavation of settlements and burial grounds in southern Siberia, the northern Caucasus and western Transcaucasia.
The term “Iron Age”, as the successor to the Stone and Bronze Ages, only appeared in the middle of the 19th century. It is applied to the cultures of primitive peoples who lived outside the territory of the great ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India and China.
Some of the cultures in this period still had no writing system, but there was active trade and exchange. The role of the artist was set apart and the value of an object might be increased by its decoration and the fame of the craftsman.
Of interest here are a collection of bronze pendants in the form of animal figures and one human (the Koban culture of the central Caucasus, 10th–4th centuries BC) and tools used in mining and metal-working by tribes in the Altai mountains: bronze and horn picks, clay nozzles and stone moulds for castings.
