Шкура копытного в курганных погребениях бронзового века: жертва или психопомп

Abstract

Among the features of the burial rite of many Bronze Age kurgan cultures in Eastern Europe, there is one interesting common feature, when the deceased is accompanied by the ritual remains of hoofed animals, which are archaeologically recorded in the form of skulls and the lower parts of the limbs. Following M. P. Gryaznov (1977), the term “animal’s hide” or “stuffed animal” was assigned to these ritual objects, which were placed in burials to substitute the whole animals by the pars pro toto principle. In the Early Bronze Age, the main area of the use of ritual animals in the funerary ritual was the Lower Kuban region, where from a quarter to a third of the burials of the Novotitorovskaya and East-Azov Catacomb Grave cultures were accompanied by hides of small cattle. During the Middle Bronze Age, this burial practice significantly expanded its range and is found in all catacomb cultures of the Don basin and the steppe Ciscaucasia, with its greatest manifestation in the Seversky Donets basin. In the post-Catacomb period, the tradition of using of animal hides and stuffed animals in the funerary rite was preserved only in the Dnieper-Don Babino Culture. In the Late Bronze Age, this practice was unevenly represented in the Srubnaya cultural region, most massively in the Dnieper-Don region. Archaeological contexts, together with ethnographic, folklore and mythological analogies, allow us to interpret the ritual remains of ungulates as the animal–psychopomp that accompanied the soul of the deceased to the afterlife.