Каратугай – могильник финала эпохи бронзы

Abstract

The article describes the materials of the Sargary-Alekseev burial ground Karatugai, located 90 km north of Karaganda (Central Kazakhstan). The accompanying inventory of the investigated funeral structures included ceramic vessels, metal decorations, and some bone tubules for the braid adornment. A ritual platform in the form of a stone ring was located on the northwestern periphery of the site, next to which a small cattle scapula, stone segment-like tools and a discoid stone pendant (?) were found. The author divides the funerary sites of the Sargary-Alekseev culture into the Begazy and Sargary types and relates the Karatugai burial ground to the latter. The materials of the burial ground find numerous analogies in the funerary sites of the Final Bronze Age and of the transition to the Early Iron Age throughout the territory of the steppe Eurasia, which is explained not only by epochal processes, but also by cultural interaction with the Irmen culture of southern Western Siberia. On the bones of the two burials, calibrated C14 dates were obtained, according to which the time of the site’s existence dates back to the 11th – 10th centuries BC.