Barrows of the Eneolithic-Early Iron Age in the Kalinovka in the Dnieper Nadporozhye

Abstract

The main aim of this article is description and publication of the materials of two barrows which was explored by the expedition of the Dmytro Yavornytsky National Historical Museum of Dnipro by L. P. Krylova in 1973. They located near the Kalinovka village of the Solonyansky raiion of the Dnipropetrovska oblast. Methods: comparative-historical, typological, chronological, descriptive. Main results. The barrows near the Kalinovka village of the Solonyansky raiion of the Dnipropetrovska oblast belonged to a large burial ground, which was partly destroyed. Only the mound with a sign of triangulation remained was saved at the time of excavation. The mound 1 was build in two construction receptions. The primary mound, fixed on the V-shaped ditch, is filled for the main grave 7 of post-mariupol culture. It is connected with the device of a near-tomb pavement made of wood with separate inclusions of stones and a peculiar covering of the sub-square site with a layer of clay. Both ritual actions are known in a member of post-mariupol burials of the territorial variant of the Steppe Dnipro and the Dnipro Nadporizhzhya. The main markers of the burial rite of the post-mariupol burials are the shape of the burial pit, elongated position of the deceased on the back, orientation to East, the presence of ocher carmine color. The group of pit burials (№№ 3,5,6,9) forms the second cultural-chronological horizon. One of them may be associated with a ring filler, which brought the mound to a modern size. The most recent are burials of zrubna culture (№№ 2,8), in one of which ceramic fragments were found. Cultural identity of grave 1 has not been established. Barrow 2 was 4 m high and 30 m in diameter, was erected for four simultaneous Scythian burials. The embankment was surrounded by a ditch with two bridges at the East and Nord edges, 1,5 m in length and bones of animals from the reed. Outside the pit, vertically standing stones of the cromlech are traced. All the graves are made in the same type of catacomb, which are distributed in the Northern Black Sea in the IV–III centuries BC. The main grave 3 was collective – two adults (a man and a woman) and a child. The surviving in situ parts of the male skeleton testify to the position of the burials elongated on the back, the head to the East. The burial was repeatedly robbed. At the entrance to the chamber, from the inside, a part of the wall of a bronze boiler was found. For the chronological definitions, well-dated categories of inventory (arrowheads and ect.) are involved, allowing to date grave 3 to the second half of the IV and beginning of the III BC. The life-long social status of a man of grave 3 in the hierarchy of the caldron-holders is related to the head of the genus of the lower aristocratic stratum of the Scythian society. The three graves contained various age burials of children, accompanied by ornaments. Their status is ambiguous since may reflect both generic or tribal affinity with those buried in grave 3, and a dependent position relative to the child in grave 3 as a possible heir to a sufficiently high social rank of the father. Concise conclusions. The obtained materials allow to determine the time of occurrence of a burial mound near the Kalinovka village by the Eneolithic in the presence of post-mariupol burials, which mark the appearance of a mound rite in the Steppe and Pre-Dnipro Ukraine. Its further functioning is connected with the Bronze Age, represented by pit and log complexes. The later cultural and chronological layer is formed by the Scythian burials, which reflect the processes of social stratification of the society. Practical meaning. The published materials can be used in generalizing research of the problems of archeology of the Early Iron Age of Ukraine. Scientific novelty. The cultural and chronological features of mound construction and burial complexes near the Kalinovka village of the Solonyansky raiion of the Dnipropetrovska oblast had been determine. Type of article: analytical.