Pages:  339-369 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp262339369

The article publishes materials from three post-Catacomb graves from barrow 1 of the Vesyoly I cemetery on the right bank of the Lower Don. One of them is a standard burial of an adult killed by an arrow with a notched flint point (burial 4); the second one is the burial of a flintklapper (burial 29), which is unusual in its ritual and grave goods; and the third one is a pit-cenotaph containing pottery and the remains of sacrificial animals (burial 32). An attempt is made to demonstrate the ritual unity of these graves within a single funerary and memorial complex. According to stratigraphic data and in the structural-semantic sense, burial 4 seems to be central. Two other burials, 29 and 32, were its accompanying funeral feasts, the first of which contained the sacrifice of a flintklapper (burial 29), and the second one was the offerings of meat and other food in clay vessels (burial 32).The author substantiates the hypothesis that the flintklapper belonged to a military detachment of the pre-Caucasian population of the Lola culture, which stormed the Liventsovskaya-Karataevskaya fortress on the Right Bank of the Don, 40 km southwest of the Vesyoly I cemetery. This, after R. A. Mimokhod, occurred during the second phase of the existence of the post-Catacomb cultural block (2100–2000 CalBC). According to this hypothesis, the flintklapper was a captive of the local post-Catacomb population, which combined the traditions of the Dnieper-Don Babino and Kamenka-Liventsvoskaya cultures of the late Middle Bronze Age.

Keywords: North-East Azov region, final stage of the Middle Bronze Age, Dnieper-Don Babino culture, Lola culture, Kamenka-Liventsvoskaya cultural group, stratigraphy, funerary rite, typology, flint arrowheads

Information about author:

Aleksei Kiyashko (Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation). Doctor of Historical Sciences. Southern Federal University. Bolshaya Sadovaya St., 105/42, Rostov-on-Don, 344006, Russian Federation; Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0001-7666-4477