Pages: 57-86

The article is based on the results of a planigraphic examination of Scythian barrows implemented by the author in order to explore the social and clan relations within the Scythian society. The planigraphic analysis is a study of the arrangement and depth of burial construction components within a single kurgan. This kind of analysis has shown that there is a strict pattern in the arrangement of graves within a kurgan depending on their depth and, also, on their placement: either in the same row with the principal kurgan tomb or in the next row, in the eastern part of the kurgan; or in the western part of the kurgan ‘behind’ the main inhumation.The western half of the kurgan contained the shallowest graves of servants and horses, farthest from the center. Of the graves located in the same row with the principal ones those in the south (and on the right) had a higher status than those in the north (on the left). Like principal burials, the southern ones had accompanying horse graves; they were also marked by funerary feasts and additional earthwork of a large-scale. The female graves were predominantly placed in the eastern part of kurgans, in the second row. There were exceptional female burials marked by all the accoutrements of prestigious male graves that seem to indicate the ambivalent position of women, recorded in the ethnographic data.

Keywords: Northern Pontic Sea, Scythians, kurgan, orientation, social and clan hierarchy, gender transformation

Information about author:

Maria Ochir-Goryaeva (Elista, Russian Federation). Doctor of Historical Sciences. Kalmyk Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Ilishkin St., 8, Elista, 358000, Republic of Kalmykia, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]