The Mortuary Behavior at Sunghir

Considerations of the mortuary behavior at Sunghir concern principally the two elaborate graves, Graves 1 and 2. Although each exhibits patterns evident elsewhere in Mid Upper Paleolithic burials, the combinations of features and the richness of the two graves is truly exceptional. Yet there is additional evidence for mortuary behavior, principally associated with the Sunghir 5 cranium and for the burial above Grave 2 (here designated as Grave 2bis). The Sunghir graves have been described in detail by O.N. Bader (1998), and additional analyses of the associated materials have been done by White (1993, 1999) and Khlopachev (2006). Information on them is available from additional sources (e.g., Bader 1978; Soffer 1985; Abramova 1995; Bader and Bader 2000; Pettitt 2011), as well as from numerous short reports. Of these, the primary sources are those of O.N. Bader from the excavations and excavation analysis and of White and Khlopachev from analysis of the original material in the Vladimir District Regional Museum. The description here is an amalgamation of information from these and other sources. There are some inconsistencies between the different sources, and when possible they have been sorted out using the diagrams, and especially the discussion and in situ photographs, provided by O.N. Bader (1998). In the discussions of the graves and their contents, it should be kept in mind that many of the objects found in the graves and clearly associated with the human remains also occur in reasonable numbers in the cultural layer (cf. Bader 1978). This applies to the ochre, the several varieties of ivory beads, small stone pendants, animal figurines, tubular bones, pierced canines (arctic fox and wolf), and ivory spears (or fragments thereof). Additional decorative objects not found in the burials, such as shell beads and engravings, also derive from the cultural layer. It remains unclear whether these finds from the cultural layer were artifacts and aspects of body decoration that were common among the individuals at Sunghir (some of which happened to be preserved in abundance in the graves), whether their occurrence in the cultural layer is the result of pieces lost in the process of preparing the burials, whether the isolated pieces are from disturbed (unknown) burials, or whether (as suggested by Bader 1978) they come from discarded pieces of clothing.

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