Об особенностях могильников киевской культуры
On peculiarities of burial grounds of Kiev culture

Summary/Abstract: Layered filling up of interments, lack of strong order in location of calcinated bones and grave goods (basically vessel frgments) in the burials are the main features of burial rites of the Kiev culture. The burials on cemeteries are usually accompanied by pits without apparent traces of graves which are interpreted as sacrificial. K.V. Kasparova mentions the appearance of peculiarities in grave arrangement similar to Kiev ones for the late stages of Polessie and the Upper Dnieper variant of Zarubintsy culture. The tendency of burial rites evolution similar to this is observed in Celtic corpse cremation in the middle La Tene and in the Przeworsk cemeteries of the late Roman period. The Wielbark model of burial arrangement is very similar to the Kiev model. Thus burial rites of the Kiev culture is not the consequence of adoption from some alien culture and represents one of the natural versions of cremation ceremony evolution.Ethnographic parallels indicate that the appearance of burials similar to the Kiev ones can be interpreted as a result of a complicated custom of getting rid of the dead body during the burial rites. Taking into consideration this circumstance many peculiarities of Kiev funeral ceremony prove to be analogous (the character of calcinated bones set in graves where there are many of them, orientation of burials and Kiev grave chains depending on bank line of the river, small sizes of the late burial grounds, presence of uncremated beast bones in additional pits in graves, and so on). This does not allow one to speak about utilization of different models of grave arrangement by Kiev and «Zarubintsy» population. On these grounds the author rejects the supposition of M.B. Shchukin that the Kiev culture sites with pits with calcined bones are not cemeteries but funeral feast place. At the end of the article the author brings anthropological characteristics of scull from the grave 6 of Kiev burial ground Shishino-5.

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