Pages: 175-191 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp242175191 

The paper analyzes artefacts from the Late Neolithic child burial of the Ust-Zelinda-2 site (Ust-Ilimsk District, Irkutsk Region, Russia). Some features of the burial practice (burial in a pit, secondary burial, manipulation with a skull, burial with an animal) and a rather diverse set of grave goods allow to consider the grave as a complex with traces of a non-typical handling of child’s remains. The central place in the complex was given to a paddle carved from moose antler. It was placed in the “belly” area of the buried. Technical-technological analysis, wear traces as well as ethnographic examples of Siberian ritual attributes allow to consider it as a shamanic beater. Analysis of the position of the moose teeth in the burial suggests, hypothetically, the existence of another shamanic item - a tambourine, where teeth played the role of sound pendants, as well as allows to reconstruct its shape and dimensions. A research of internal features of ethnographic tambourines suggested an evolution line of sound pendants in tambourines from animal teeth to metal items. A complex analysis of all data defined the buried child as a person with special social status and the set of grave goods as the child’s heritage. At present time, this set of shamanic attributes is the earliest one in the Baikal Region and dates to the middle — the second part of IV Millennium BC.

Keywords: Siberia, Northern Angara River Region, child burial, Late Neolithic, Isakovo Culture, shamanic beater, shamanic tambourine, moose teeth

Information about authors:

Zhanna Marchenko (Novosibirsk, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Akademik Lavrentiev Ave., 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-4729-8575
Artem Grishin (Novosibirsk, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Akademik Lavrentiev Ave., 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0001-8367-2272
Garkusha Yuri (Novosibirsk, Russian Federation). Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Akademik Lavrentiev Ave., 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-8856-7495