Obiectele de aramă în cadrul schimburilor dintre comunitățile cucuteniene și cele din regiunile limitrofe
The Copper Artefacts in the Context of the Trade between the Cucuteni Communities and Their Neighbours

Summary/Abstract: The copper artefacts represent a category of goods intensively circulated within the trade relationships between the Cucuteni communities and the ones belonging to the neighbouring cultures, so that they become an important marker of these trades. Their quality of trade markers is given by the raw material - the copper, that can arrive in the East-Carpathian area only through trades, and by the fact that some of these artefacts belong to typological series that allow them to be seen in connection with certain cultural areas or metallurgical centres. The author of this article makes an inventory of the copper artefacts discovered in the Cucuteni culture area between the Carpathians and the Pruth and tries to establish their main directions of circulation. In addition, starting from the observation that the majority of copper artefacts, especially the large ones (axe-hammers, two cross-shaped edge axes, axes of mixed shape, flat axes, adornments), are spread in the area between the Eastern Carpathians and the Sireth, the author considers two explanations for this phenomenon: the closeness to the metallurgical centres in Transylvania and the intensive trade relationships established by the neighbouring populations with the Cucuteni communities in the area, as a result of the control the latter ones had over the salt resources present in the Subcarpathian region of Moldavia.

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