Suchergebnisse

The article presents the results of processing of the archaeozoological collection from the excavations of the Ashna-Pando hillfort (Surskiy district of the Ulyanovsk region), carried out by P. D. Stepanov in 1949. The collection (2,760 bone fragments) belongs to three cultural layers identified at the site: the Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture of the Bronze Age, a specific local cultural group of the Early Iron Age and the Imenkovo culture of the late period of the Migrations era. It is the materials of the Migration period that are of the greatest interest. During that time, Ashna-Pando, in all likelihood, played the role of a local communal center — a place for meetings of the community. The collection of bones from the Imenkovo assemblage seems to reflect periodic joint meals rather than daily consumption. In general, the meat diet of the Imenkovo population, especially for the last period of the occupation of Ashna-Pando, was characterized by the increasing role of hunting for forest fauna, which, in combination with the finds of agricultural tools in Ashna-Pando as well as in other settlements of the Imenkovo in the Sura region, reflects the decisive role of slash-and-burn farming in the economic system.

The paper presents results of charcoal and macrofossil analysis of the cremation burial grounds of the Imenkovo culture that occupied the Middle Volga region in 400—650 CE. We analyzed assemblages from four necropolises: Bogorodski, Maklasheevka 4, Komarovka and a burial ground from Zhigulevsk 2 site. Charred remains were recorded at the bottom of burials, among cremated bones or in the in-fill of graves and mortuary vessels. The assemblages contained charcoal, caryopses and stems of millet and cereals, seeds and stems of grasses and weeds, and shoots of thorny shrubs. The size of the charcoal pieces did not exceed 3 cm, being much smaller in most burials. The species composition of charcoal from cremations indicates that all locally-available woody taxa were used for the funeral pyre, instead of choosing certain types of trees for ritual purposes. Thus, the composition of the cremation fuel reflected the vegetation composition of the encasing landscape. Dominant charred taxa in the Imenkovo cremations were Tilia and Betula (linden and birch), the typical components of the "slash-and-burn landscape" of the Middle Volga region during this period. Despite the fact that all the burial grounds were located at the higher grounds in the landscape, the presence of riverine taxa — Alnus, Salix, and Ulmus (willow, alder and elm) and abundance of charred herbaceous remains in the charcoal spectra points at floodplains or mouths of gullies as a probable location of cremation platforms. An important detail of the funeral rite, revealed by the research, is placing unhulled millet, soaked and germinated before cremation, into the funeral pyre.