Pages: 27-42 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp2332742

The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the child’s place in the social universe of the Scythians. The basis for the study was a child burial from the Tovsta Mohyla mound as one of the few not robbed burials of steppe Scythia of the 4 ^th century BC. Meanwhile, the burial is regarded as a text (in the semiotic sense). The method developed by the author for reconstructing the semantics of images on the costume elements of the buried led to the conclusion that they reflect a complex of ideas about dominion over the midzone of the mythological universe. The article rebuilds the semiotic status of things that accompanied the buried which allowed us to conclude that the child in the Scythian society inherited the place in the social space belonging to his kin. The child’s burial from the Tovsta Mohyla mound belonged to the Scythian “priest-king”. The buried has not yet passed the initiation so the grave lacks things that are peculiar only to the male or female inventory. Prospect of further research is connected with the methodology development for reconstructing the semantics of the Scythian burial as a single complex.

Keywords: Steppe Scythia, 4^th century BC, social status of a child, Scythian mythology, semiotic status of a thing, mythological worldview of Scythians

Information about author:

Julia Kokorina (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences, Doctor of Philological Sciences. Moscow Polytechnic University. Bolshaya Semyonovskaya St., 38, Moscow, 107023, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-2496-3958