Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 48 (2) 2020   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2020.48.2.014-021

Annotation:  A Multidisciplinary Study of Finds from Suchu Island (1973 Season, Excavation II, Dwelling 1) A Zoomorphic Antler Staff from an Early Neolithic Burial at Pushkinsky, the Orenburg Region Cultural Attribution of Early Bronze Age Tombs Under Kurgans in Azerbaijan Two Rare Finds from the Maikop-Novosvobodnaya Sites in the Black Sea Region The Marfa Kurgan in the Stavropol Territory: An Example of an Ancient Architectural Structure On the Earliest Use of Plate-Formed Cheekpieces and the Emergence of Horse Riding (Based on Finds fr Wooden Constructions in Bronze and Iron Age Burials in Japan and Korea The Southeastern Sindica Frontier: The Raevskoye Fortifi ed Settlement Polychrome Style in Mangystau, Kazakhstan Metal Artifacts from a Newly Discovered Cemetery in the Severnaya Sosva Basin, Northwestern Siberia The Ethnoarchaeology of Russians in the Syro-Palestinian Region (18th–19th Centuries) Traditional Buryat Beliefs About Birds Bridal Symbols in the Don Cossack Wedding Celebration of Nowruz in Bukhara and Samarkand in Ritual Practice and Social Discourses (the Second Architectural and Archaeological Studies in the Tobolsk Kremlin During the 1950s (Based on Photograp Trepanations in Sauromato-Sarmatian Crania from the Lower Volga A Case of Surgical Extraction of the Lower Third Molars in a Cranial Series from the Pucara de Tilca   

A Zoomorphic Antler Staff from an Early Neolithic Burial at Pushkinsky,
the Orenburg Region

N.L. Morgunova

Orenburg State Pedagogical University, Sovetskaya 19, Orenburg, 460014, Russia

I describe a rare artifact—a staff with a zoomorphic finial, carved from the curved part of an elk antler. It was found in 1982 on a bank of the Tok River, in the western Orenburg region. The artifact was in a seated burial, discovered by chance. The archaeological context is described, and a cultural and chronological attribution is proposed. It is concluded that the burial is associated with the Early Neolithic Elshanka culture. Similar staffs were found mostly in Mesolithic and Neolithic burials in the forest zone of Eastern Europe. Radiocarbon analyses suggest that seated burials with zoomorphic antler staffs date to the interval from the 6th to the early 3rd millennium BC. The peculiar feature of the Pushkinsky specimen is that it likely depicts a horse rather than an elk, probably because the economy in the steppe and forest-steppe focused on horse hunting. Such artifacts were apparently ritual, and the practice could have originated in the steppe and forest-steppe from whence it spread to the forest zone.

Keywords: Zoomorphic staff, burial, Mesolithic-Neolithic, Southern Urals