Purpose. Comprehensive analysis of ancient mining monuments of the Paleometal era in the Donetsk basin as sociated with the extraction of metal ores; determination of the cultural and chronological affiliation of the Ber ezovskyi mine on the extraction of silver ores-a unique object of ancient mining in Eastern Europe. Methodology. The work involved a set of methods: retrospective, historical and comparative, cartographic, statis tical ones, method of analogies, method of typological and functional analysis. In addition, mineralogical methods were used to study sulfide ores (mineral diagnostics), the method of stratigraphic, mineralogical and petrographic analysis and a retrospective description of the mining technology development. findings. The results significantly expand the understanding of the resource base of the Donetsk basin exploited in the Bronze Age. The complex of ancient stone mining tools identified in one of the mine workings of the Ber ezovskyi silverpolymetallic deposit allows suggesting its development by the population of a catacomb cultural com munity during the Middle Bronze Age (XXVII-XX centuries BC). And this, thereby, makes productive time of the Donbass ore base more remote, known from the materials of the ancient mines of the Late Bronze Age (XVII-XIII centuries BC) in the copper ore zone of the Bakhmut depression of the Donets Basin almost by a thousand years. originality. For the first time in the territory of Eastern Ukraine an ancient silver ore mine was discovered. To date, their exploitation in antiquity, in contrast to polymetallic ores, was not even anticipated by researchers. The Caucasus was traditionally considered to be the main source of raw materials for the manufacture of silver products of by the population of the Eastern European steppe and foreststeppe in the Bronze Age. The study made it possible to expand not only the raw material base of the ancient Donbass population of the Bronze Age (XXX-XIII centuries BC), but also the chronological framework of its mining activities for the extraction of metal ores. Practical value. The data obtained expands the understanding of the raw material base used by the ancient popula tion of the Donetsk basin. In turn, this will contribute to the formation of a holistic view on the metal production of the ancient inhabitants in the Eastern European region, which may probably be applied in preparing special works on ancient history, including the history of mining, as well as related disciplines, in the systematization of funds and the designing the museum exhibits.

Large-scale works have been carried out at the beginning of this century on the background of the set of Bronze Age monuments in the zone of Kartamysh copper ore occurrence in the Bakhmut basin of Donbass. Taking into account some previously researched monuments of mining and metallurgical activities within other ore occurrences of the Donetsk ridge, those works enable to compare the monuments of the Donetsk Mining and Metallurgical Center (DMMC) with other specialized monuments of Srubnaya cultural community in the copper ore territories of the Eastern European steppe. The monuments of Kartamysh archaeological microdistrict, as well as the other monuments of the Donetsk mining and metallurgical center, located in the zone of copper ore occurrences in the Bakhmut basin of Donbass, give evidences of all the cycles of ancient metal production. The majority of them are the evidence of the mining and ore-dressing cycle. Thus, the considerable volumes of mined and dressed ore, found in Kartamysh, as well as in other ore occurrences of the Bakhmut basin, currently suggest that the monuments in the ore territory of Donbass mainly operate within mining system. Similar specialization is observed in other mining and metallurgical areas in Eastern Europe, such as Mikhailo-Ovsyanka (Povolzhye) and Kargaly (South Ural). A feature of the DMMC is far lesser intensity of metallurgy and metalworking in its cultural frames. Limited range of DMMC monuments indicate that the production of metal products was focused only on domestic consumption. Fracturing of the Donbass bedrock, in contrast to the monolithic bedrock of Povolzhye, and especially to the Southern Urals, facilitated the effective use of stone tools in the process of mining. In the MMC, operating within the eastern production zone of the Srubnaya cultural community (Mikhailo-Ovsyanka, Kargaly), miners and metallurgists had to develop metallurgy more actively, since the features of geology in these regions required the use of metal tools to extract copper ores. Obviously, this circumstance explains a large number of end fragments of metal pickaxes found at Kargaly, as well as casting molds for casting these tools. The functioning of the full-scale cycle of ancient metal production and even visually recorded scale of ancient mining activity in the zone of copper ore occurrences of the Bakhmut basin gives reasons to assert the existence of mining and metallurgical center focused on large-scale production in the Donetsk Ridge in the Bronze Age. The main products of the DMMC were not metal items or even ingots, as it had been considered previously, but enriched copper ore (concentrate) as raw material for metallurgical production. Enriched ore was the commodity to be exchanged by the miners and metallurgists of the Donetsk center. It could be possibly done via professional traders with neighboring and distant tribes, and was exchanged for livestock and agriculture products, as well as for various household items. The analysis, carried out in the paper, proves that other mining and metallurgical complexes of the Eastern European steppe (Kargaly, Mikhailo-Ovsyanka), which had been previously explored, also operated at the same time and in similar to the DMMC production system.