On the Southern Impact on the Burnt Structures under the Burial Mounds of the Kyshtovka Culture

This article discusses the emergence of a recently identified type of archaeological objects - burnt wooden structures with pottery vessels turned upside down in the corners. These objects are located at necropolises of the second quarter of the second millennium AD. The pottery discovered makes it possible to attribute these objects to the Kyshtovka culture. It has been suggested in the previous studies that a series of rituals for which these structures were made and burned, were intended for releasing the soul of the deceased, which temporarily dwelt in wooden itterma figurines. Although the closest parallels to this ritual practice appear in the taiga Ugric environment, the article focuses on the southern impact. In author’s opinion, the final act in the cycle of funerary actions, associated with burning the models of dwellings where the wooden sculptures were placed, can be linked with the southern impact. Southern and northern features are also combined in the burial structures of the syncretic Vengerovo culture. There is a noticeable similarity between the burial structures of the Vengerovo culture, represented by truncated quadrangular pyramids and charred logworks or frames inside, and burnt cultic structures of the Kyshtovka population. It has been concluded that impacts from the south could trigger expanding the cycle of funeral activities among the Kyshtovka population due to borrowings reflected in the emergence of a new tradition of burning figurines in which one of the souls of a deceased person resided, inside wooden buildings. This is a kind of double burial, combining the practices of the Kyshtovka population, associated with real burial of the body, and borrowed practices associated with ritual of freeing the soul from the figurine. Further evolution of cultic buildings can be observed in their separation from the territory of necropolises and transformation into an independent phenomenon associated with sacralization of social leaders who became the patrons of clans and territorial entities.

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