Spearheads of the Keliysky Stone Box Burial Ground (Ingushetia Highlands)

Abstract

For the first time, the paper publishes all 20 spearheads and one spear counter-weight, discovered as a result of excavations in 1987–1988, in Keliysky stone boxes burial ground of Highland Ingushetia. A brief description of the burials containing these artifacts is published. The main feature of this burial ground is that the burial structural stone boxes, despite being intended primarily for individual burials, were used for multiple (up to five times) subburials. And only a small part of the spearheads were revealed in the burials in situ, while the rest were either re-laid (together with the bone remains of the buried), moved to the end of the stone box, placed onto the stone box overlap or buried in the ground above the stone box. The authors of the paper assume that the population who made the stone-bearing burial ground (at least its significant part) is of a foreign cultural origin. Accordingly, the artifacts accompanying the buried, including of defensive and offensive weapon parts, are largely imported. The published collection of spearheads, containing a small variety of types, allows us to consider the Keliysky burial ground to be a reference monument for the spearheads typology in the North Caucasus of the 13th–14th centuries AD.