The Neolithic Burial of a Child from the Krasnoyarsk Region

Abstract

The article analyzes the findings on the Neolithic burial discovered at the Udachny-14 burial site in the city of Krasnoyarsk. The skeleton of a child of 9–10 years old was located head to the south-west parallel to the river (upstream). Over the grave there is a hearth in which the red deer calcaneal bone is found. Between the skull and the pelvis bones, two beaver incisors lying parallel to each other, could relate to clothing or to decoration. A piece of ochre was found near the left instep bones. Almost all the bones of the legs of the buried individual were in anatomical order and were elongated along the long burial axis. The corpus bones, shoulder girdle and head were greatly displaced. Such order of the bones suggests that the grave was disturbed a short time after the funeral. Odontologic examination of the remains shows a combination in the dentition structure of the “eastern” and “western” signs with a predominance of the first ones. The greatest odontologic similarity of the buried individual is related to a few Neolithic series from the Northern Angara region, which partially correlates with the archaeological data. Based on the 14C date and the stratigraphic position, the burial is dated to the late Neolithic (the end of the 4th millennium BC). Among the few sites in the region, it finds analogies in the necropolises of “Bor” urotshistshe at the mouth of the Bazaikha river, near the summer children’s camps of the GorONO and in the Gremyachiy Ruchei burial ground. They are characterized by the soil burials, the grave pits located mainly along the river, postmortal manipulations with the dead body, over- or near grave fire, use of jewellery made of teeth and animal bones as accompanying burial objects