THE SCYTHIAN BARROW NEAR KALINOVKA VILLAGE IN NADPORIZHZHYA

Abstract

In 1973 Dnipropetrovsk Yavornitsky National Historical Museum conducted archaeological rescue works near the village Kalinovka, Solonyansky district, Dnipropetrovsk region.
 Scythian barrow 2 was the 4 m high with a diameter up to 30 m. The mound was surrounded with the circle of the stone blocks. Four Scythian burials were discovered. Three of them belong to children of different ages, one — to the family. All burials were in destroyed catacomb graves. The skeletons lied supine with their head directed to the east. They were accompanied by gold and bronze jewelry and glass beads.
 The primary grave 3 deserves the greatest attention. It was also made in catacomb grave in the centre of the barrow, on the same axis with children’s tombs. The gave has been repeatedly looted and the looting mine and other violations of the grave were fixed. The burial was collective — two adults (a man and a woman) and a child laid supine with their head directed to the east.
 The grave goods were represented by the fragment of metal caldron, bronze arrow heads (34 pieces), the fragments of iron spear-head and possibly the sword, several knives with bone handle, the bronze plate, a «cockroach», a Greek lutherium, details of the composite Greek spindle, and numerous decorations. Scythian barrow 2 dates from the second half of the 4th to the beginning of the 3rd century BC. The group of children’s graves of the barrow ought to be obviously include to this interval.
 As to the question of the life status of persons buried in the grave 3 it should be noted that, according to the criteria proposed by one of the authors for the Scythian burials of the «holders of the сauldron», the man from the primary grave was the head of the lower aristocratic stratum of the Scythian society. The presence of a child in the central burial as a possible descendant of a sufficiently high social status of his father, allows to consider simultaneously the main children’s burials as dependent and subordinate to this particular person.