Funeral Practices of the Final Bronze Age in the Southern Trans-Urals

The article examines the problem of interpreting burials from settlements of the Final Bronze Age in the Southern Trans-Ural region. The aim of the research is to identify factors that influenced burial practices during this period. Fieldwork and analytical studies were conducted at the Ogorodnaya site, and the results have been presented. Methods such as physical anthropology, radiocarbon dating, isotope analysis of strontium, nitrogen and carbon were employed. Based on radiocarbon dates (15th–13th century BCE) and funeral rites, the burial is attributed to the Final Bronze Age. The individual was a Caucasian man aged 30–35 who showed no signs of serious illness and had a diet of meat and dairy products typical for the local Bronze Age populations. His area of birth and early life were at least 80 kilometers away from the burial site, indicating his mobility. This example expands the range of non-kurgan burials (both at settlements and in earlier burial mounds) that represent a significant proportion of the sample of funerary sires from that period. Their ritual features, dietary habits and individual characteristics were not significantly different from those found in burials under burial mounds. Due to the small size of the burial structures making it difficult to accurately assess differences in resources invested in funerary rituals and consequently differences in social status. However, the choice of funeral rite may have been influenced by the deceased’s background, as demonstrated by the examples of the Sokolok kurgan and the Ogorodnaya site with local and non-local strontium signals in the enamel of individuals buried there, respectively. The Ogorodnaya burial and similar ones should be considered not as a deviation, but rather as a variant of the standard practice of dealing with the deceased

Ancient history · Bronze Age · Epistemology · Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · History · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

• Strontium isotopic composition in human skeletal remains as a reflection of migration and mobility

  Open Access•M V Dobrovolskaya, A A Strokov et al.•Vestnik arheologii, antropologii…•2025

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