Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 51 (2) 2023   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2023.51.2.057-065

Annotation:  Lakhuti-IV: A New Site of the Loessic Paleolithic in Tajikistan The Emergence of Levallois Blade Industry in the Western Foothills of Tien Shan: Kulbulak Layer 24 The Kushevat Site and the Paleogeographic Context of the Initial Peopling of Northern Urals The Concept of Civilization in Modern Studies of the Neolithic in China and Japan The Pisany Kamen Rock Art Site on the Angara (Marking the Tercentenary of Its Discovery by D.G. Mess A Chalcolithic Burial in the Mountain-Forest Zone of the Trans-Urals Okunev Culture and the Dene-Caucasian Macrofamily A New Approach to the Study of Archaeological Charcoal: The Case of Metallurgical Furnaces of the So A Jurchen Temple at the Southern Ussuri Fortifi ed Site, in Primorye Irrigation Systems of the Altai: Results and Prospects of Archaeological Studies An Old Believers’ Skete near Maltsevo, Fort Chaus, Based on Mid-18th Century Documents and Their Com Artifacts from the Ural-Hungarian Center (800–1000 AD), Recently Found at Ob Ugrian Sanctuaries “Mountains” on the Draft of the Land of Fort Narym by S.U. Remezov From the History of Ethnographic Studies in the Yenisei Region: F.A. Fjelstrup’s Siberian Materials A Metric Analysis of a Human Cranium from the Khatystyr Cave, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)   

A Chalcolithic Burial in the Mountain-Forest Zone of the Trans-Urals

O.N. Korochkova, I.A. Spiridonov, and V.I. Stefanov

Ural Federal University, Mira 19, Yekaterinburg, 620002, Russia

We describe an unusual burial at a stratified Chalcolithic site Shaitanskoye 4-6 on the coast of the eponymous lake in the Sverdlovsk Region. An individual, aged 18-35 was buried in an oval flat-grave pit, 1.6 x 0.56 x 0.2 m in size. We give a detailed description of sixty funerary items, made of stone: three unusually large knives manufactured on thin chert plates (the nearest outcrops are found in Northern Kazakhstan and Southern Urals); a projectile head, 19 arrowheads, 18 flint bladelets from a side-bladed tool, a polished axe-adze, a composite tool on a blade, two plates with use-wear traces, and 15 beads. Notably, some of the artifacts are made of “southern” rocks. The results of the isotope analysis indicate considerable mobility and close ties between populations of the forest and steppe Trans-Urals in the 4th and 3d millennia BC. The Chalcolithic site, which, apart from the burial, includes habitation deposits with numerous artifacts such as ceramics of various types, lithics including a large series of arrowheads and several flint figurines, can be viewed as a complex archaeological object where, among other activities, rites were performed securing group consolidation.

Keywords: Urals, Chalcolithic, burial, arrowheads, knives, flint figurines, isotopes