Погребально-поминальный комплекс финала средней бронзы на Нижнем Дону с жертвоприношением мастера по кремнеобработке
The Grave of the Final Middle Bronze Age Grave on the Lower Don with the Sacrifice of a Flintklapper

Summary/Abstract: The article publishes materials from three post-Catacomb graves from barrow 1 of the Vesyoly I cemetery on the right bank of the Lower Don. One of them is a standard burial of an adult killed by an arrow with a notched flint point (burial 4); the second one is the burial of a flintklapper (burial 29), which is unusual in its ritual and grave goods; and the third one is a pit-cenotaph containing pottery and the remains of sacrificial animals (burial 32). An attempt is made to demonstrate the ritual unity of these graves within a single funerary and memorial complex. According to stratigraphic data and in the structural-semantic sense, burial 4 seems to be central. Two other burials, 29 and 32, were its accompanying funeral feasts, the first of which contained the sacrifice of a flintklapper (burial 29), and the second one was the offerings of meat and other food in clay vessels (burial 32).The author substantiates the hypothesis that the flintklapper belonged to a military detachment of the pre-Caucasian population of the Lola culture, which stormed the Liventsovskaya-Karataevskaya fortress on the Right Bank of the Don, 40 km southwest of the Vesyoly I cemetery. This, after R. A. Mimokhod, occurred during the second phase of the existence of the post-Catacomb cultural block (2100–2000 CalBC). According to this hypothesis, the flintklapper was a captive of the local post-Catacomb population, which combined the traditions of the Dnieper-Don Babino and Kamenka-Liventsvoskaya cultures of the late Middle Bronze Age.

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