Daggers of Pre-Scythian and Scythian times from the burial complexes of the Kamennomostsky burial in Kabardino-Balkaria
https://doi.org/10.18384/2949-5164-2024-5-174-188
Abstract
Aim. To examine the daggers of pre-Scythian and Scythian times found in 2008 during excavations of a burial ground in the village Kamennomostskoye, Kabardino-Balkarian Republic in the context of materials from a two-layer monument of different periods, which is referred in the literature to a cultural phenomenon of the Koban culture.
Methodology. Using the methods of stratigraphic analysis, it was established that the daggers belong to burials of pre-Scythian and early Scythian times, different in funeral rites, made on a cape plateau at the confluence of two rivers – the Malka and the Kichmalka. Burials in stone boxes took place at this site in pre-Scythian times and contained limestone structures buried in the continental layer, in which men (warriors), woman and children who were residents of the mountain valleys of the North Caucasus in the 9th–8th centuries BC were crouched and buried. At the end of the 7th–6th centuries BC new ritual actions took place on the site of the existing burial ground. Elongated corpses appear at the level of the ancient horizon, slightly buried in the ground, laid down with stone layouts from boulders rounded with water. Among the stones there are traces of funeral feasts in the form of broken vessels and weapons, the material appearance of which corresponds to the Scythian archaic epoch.
Results. Based on a typological analysis, the bimetallic dagger from the burial in the box is assigned to the circle of blades of the Kabardino-Pyatigorsk type, and the iron dagger found among the stone linings of the upper layer of the burial ground is classified as a type of blade with an antenna-shaped pommel, characteristic of Scythian weapons of the archaic period.
Research implications. Stratigraphic and typological observations make it possible to speak confidently not about a single “Koban” culture of the Kamennomostskoye burial ground, but about two historically different periods of the monument's existence in pre-Scythian and Early Scythian times, differing both in the rite of burial and in the material culture of the corresponding epochs.
About the Author
V. Yu. Zuev
International Journal “Stratum plus. Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology”
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Vadim Yu. Zuev – Cand Sci (History), member of the editorial board,
St.Petersburg
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