SARMATIAN BURIALS NEAR THE ASTANINO VILLAGE IN THE EASTERN CRIMEA

The present article contains the materials of two Sarmatian burials that had been studied in 1966-1967 years by the Kerch expedition of Institute of Archeology of Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (the chief of expedition - A.M. Leskov) in the Astanino village in the Eastern Crimea. These burials had been made on small depth in embankments of barrows of the bronze epoch, therefore it is not possible to track contours of funeral constructions. The dead were laid on their backs, heads turned to the North and the North-West. The utensils buried in the same tombs included two ceramic gray-clay pelikes, two gray-clay bowls, a red-gloss vessel, a red-clay pottery, a set of glass and cornelian beads, and the Egyptian faience beads. These things allow to exactly date the investigated complexes within the second half of the 1st century BC - the beginnings of the 1st century AD. The main distinctive characteristics of Early-Sarmatian burials of Northern Pontic region consist in the use of already existing barrows for burial places, orientations of the dead in the Northern sector, the insignificant depth of burials. Therefore published monuments should be also referred to them. A small number of such complexes with their distribution on the quite big territory between the Don and Dnepr rivers testify to the low density of the nomadic population at that time. The antique sources of the end of the 2nd - 1st centuries BC mention the presence of Roxolani in the given region. The described complexes supplement our poor knowledge of Sarmatian antiquities of the Eastern Crimea and specify the direct contacts of nomads of Northern Pontic region to the antique centers, in immediate proximity from which they had been located.