For more than a year, a team of researchers from Russia and Greece has been working on a project for the reconstruction of the compound bow of the Sintashta culture of the Bronze Age - the Sintashta Bow Project.

The authors of the project are the director of the Koryvantes Association for Historical Research - Spyros Bakas (Greece) and the head of the laboratory of experimental archaeology of the Scientific and Educational Center for Eurasian Studies of the South Ural State University (Russia), the director of the Archaeos Association - Ivan Semyan. The work is carried out with the twinning grant support of the EXARC.

The project has become a real research Odyssey full of difficulties and adventures, including discussions with dozens of archaeologists and masters of ancient technology. A member of the Archaeos Association, Klim Abramov, made exact copies of the antler parts of the bow from mound 4, pit 13 of the Stepnoye burial ground (Chelyabinsk region). Replicas of stone and bronze arrowheads of the Sintashta culture were prepared for testing. Together with the arrowheads, the antler parts set off on a journey to Greece to bring in the hands of the famous bowmaker - Joannis Bokogiannis.

It took Spyros and Ioannis a lot of time and material to make replica bows. The experimental work was carried out on the basis of a number of hypotheses, but the design and testing process constantly changed the team's vision. To date, the authors of the study have created full-scale reconstructions of 4 versions of the bow: the version of Andrei Epimakhov, the version of Dmitry Zdanovich and 2 experiment author's versions.

To date, two publications on the project are in print. On the basis of experimental research, the project participants obtained the first conclusions about possible design solutions and the practice of using ancient weapons.