ON SYNCHRONIZATION OF IMENKOVO SETTLEMENTS AND BURIALS OF THEKAZAN VOLGA AREA

Abstract

The article examines the materials of settlements and burial grounds of the Imenkovo culture in the Middle Volga region. For the analysis, materials were taken from the excavations of the author of the II Tetyushy hillfort, Maklasheevka II hillfort, investigated by P.N. Starostin and some others, where large areas of the cultural layer were studied. In addition, the author used publications that provided materials from the burial grounds of the Imenkovo culture with the rite of cremation, or cremation and inhumation. The author argues that in order to further study the issues related to the Imenkovo culture, it is necessary to carry out a comparative analysis of the finds both from settlements and from burial grounds and try to synchronize them, taking into account the relative dating by stratigraphy. Taking into account the specifics of the settlement artifacts, several categories of items turned out to be suitable for comparison. These are decorations, household items, details of horse equipment. The ceramics that were placed in burials and used by the inhabitants of settlements, as a rule, of the same forms, were not considered in the article, since its typology and chronology have not been developed. For the same reason, the clay spindle whorls found both in settlements and in burial grounds were not taken into account. It was found that some household items are the same, for example, metal pins of clothes, beads, earrings, and in horse harness, only iron bits of certain types. Moreover, the distance between the burial ground and the settlement is not a determining condition for the synchronization of their functioning at one stage or another. The author came to the conclusion that the innovations that took place in the second half of the 6th century in the culture of the population of the Imenkovo culture of the Kazan Volga region, associated with the influx of a new population, created a special situation that led to the formation of a multiethnic and multicultural ethnic substrate in the first half of the 7th century, which became part of the vast economic and cultural space of the Volga-Kama region.