Pages: 335-344

The article presents the results of excavation and different aspects of interpretation of the “elite” children’s burial, investigated at the Gorny-10 necropolis. This site, located in the northern foothills of Altai, is today the largest burial ground of the era of the Turkic Khaganates in the south of Western Siberia. The published complex is an undisturbed burial of a child of 6—7 years old with extraordinary grave goods, including horse equipment, jewelry, costume elements, as well as Chinese coins, rare for this territory. Analysis of the common and special characteristics of ritual practice and goods, recorded during the excavation of grave 48, made it possible to establish the dating of the object within the framework of the end of the 6^th—7^th centuries AD. There are grounds to conclude about the high status of the child’s family in the early medieval society. In addition, identification of items, presumably associated with amulets, testifies to the presence of some specific ideology among the population that left the necropolis. Further study of materials from the excavations of the Gorny-10 burial ground and other synchronous complexes will allow us to consider at a new level the history of the population of the periphery of the nomadic empires of Central Asia in the first centuries of the Middle Ages.

Keywords: Altai, early Middle Ages, Turkic Khaganates period, social history, chronology, archaeological sites, children’s burial

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