Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 49 (4) 2021   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2021.49.4.091-099

Annotation:  The Early Paleolithic Go Da Site and the Bifacial Lithic Industries of Southeast Asia Paleolithic Personal Ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave: The Formation of Early Symbolism and Its Region A Multidisciplinary Study of Burnt Deposits at Surungur, Fergana Valley, Southern Kyrgyzstan Handles of Early Iron Age Cauldrons from Southwestern Siberia The Pazyryk Style Burial of a Hunnic Period Noblewoman at Karakabak, Mangystau, Kazakhstan Integrative Geophysical Studies at the Novaya Kurya-1 Cemetery in the Kulunda Steppe Reconstructed Paleodiets and Subsistence Strategies of the Central Ciscaucasian Population (1000 BC Archaeological Evidence of Migration from the Southern Taiga of Western Siberia to the Urals in the Hephthalite Coin from an Early Medieval Burial at Gorny-10, Northern Altai Kainar: A Late 18th to Early 20th Century Ritual and Housing Complex in the Northern Ustyurt Tungus-Manchu Traditional Beliefs. Part 2: Zoomorphic Complex Urbanization of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia and the Far East (20th to Early 21st Centuries) Patterns in the Population History of Northern Eurasia from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age,   

Archaeological Evidence of Migration from the Southern Taiga
of Western Siberia to the Urals in the Early Middle Ages:
The Vodennikovo-1 Cemetery

N.P. Matveeva, E.A. Tretyakov, and A.S. Zelenkov

Tyumen State University, Volodarskogo 6, Tyumen, 625003, Russia

We describe 15 burials at the Vodennikovo-1 group of mounds in the northern Kurgan Region, on the Middle Iset River, relevant to migration processes during the Early Middle Ages. On the basis of numerous parallels from contemporaneous sites in the Urals and Western Siberia, the cemetery is dated to the late 7th and 8th centuries. Most of single and collective burials are inhumations in rectangular pits with a northwestern orientation, with vessels, decorated by carved or pricked designs, placed near the heads. These features, typical of the Early Medieval Bakalskaya culture of the Tobol and Ishim basins, are also observed at the Pereyma and Ust-Suerskoye-1 cemeteries in the same area. However, there are innovations such as inlet burials, those in blocks of solid wood and plank coffins, western orientation of the deceased, and placing vessels next to the burial pits. These features attest to a different tradition, evidenced by cemeteries of the Potchevash culture in the Tobol and Ishim basins (Okunevo III, Likhacheva, and Vikulovskoye). Also, Potchevash and Bakalskaya vessels co-occur at Vodennikovo-1, and some of them (jugs with comb and grooved designs) are typologically syncretic. To date, this is the westernmost cemetery of the Potchevash culture, suggestive of a migration of part of the southern taiga population from the Ishim and Tobol area to the Urals.

Keywords: Forest-steppe, Trans-Urals, Early Middle Ages, Bakalskaya culture, Potchevash culture, burial complexes