Pages: 357-379

In the 1980s—1990s, a group headed by Vadim Yagodin studied a group of cemeteries belonging to the early nomads on the Ustyurt territory. Kazybaba I cemetery is one of the most representative ones and consists of seven kurgan groups. A complex study of all the kurgans allowed us to identify a group of 81 conventional units of funerary structures of the Late Sarmatian Period as opposed to the previous period. Five types of burial complexes were defined based on these units. The results of analysis suggest that the nomads appeared at the Ustyurt south-east edges as a consequence of more active connections between the population of the forest and forest-steppe zones of Volga-Ural Region and their movement southbound along the ancient migratory ways, leading to the oriental civilizations of Khwarezm and Parthia. Their graduate settlement at the North-Western boundaries of the settled and agricultural Khwarezm exposed the nomads to the ideological influence of Zoroastrianism, which resulted in the steady decline and transformation of the pagan funerary ritualism characteristic to the nomads of the 2nd — 4th centuries.

Keywords: Ustyurt, ancient Khwarezm, Late Sarmatian period, early nomads, funerary structures

Information about authors:

Vadim Yagodin. Doctor of Historical Sciences.
Egor Kitov (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Lenin Ave., 32-A, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
Vadim V. Yagodin (Nukus, Uzbekistan). Karakalpak Research Institute of Humanities, Karakalpak Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Amir Temur St., 179-а, Nukus, 230100, Republic of Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan
E-mail: [email protected]