Despre obiceiurile funerare ale nomazilor timpurii din stepele est‐europene (sec. X–VIII î.Hr.)

Abstract

This article proposes an ordering of the information regarding funerary practices in the Eastern European steppe in the Early Iron Age (10th– 8th centuries BC), as well as a study of their territorial distribution. Traditionally, this area has been considered as a whole. The archaeological finds, almost entirely funerary, are attributed to a unitary culture (“ Cimmerian culture” / “ Černogorovka culture”) and to a homogeneous ethnic group (“ Cimmerians”) respectively. Apart from some general funeral practices (the treatment of the deceased, the graves structures), some habits (especially of deposition) are more clearly bounded geographically, sometimes partially overlapped, as in the case of the Dnieper basin. However, there are no compartments that would allow us to define narrower archaeological cultures. Moreover, such an approach would once again strengthen the culture history paradigm, which is dominant in the studying of “ early nomads” of the Eastern European steppes. Reconstructions based on this paradigm are actually caught in a vicious circle : starting from Herodotus'' information an archaeological culture has been defined, and the study of this archaeological culture inevitably confirms the written information. More promising could instead be the study of contexts in which different items were used in funerary ceremonies. This approach would have the advantage of highlighting the ways in which different communities from steppe or forest steppe area behaved, without levelling them under the name of one or another archaeological culture

Keywords

• east european steppe
• early iron age
• funerary habits
• early nomads
• “ cimmerians”
• “ cimmerian culture”
• the černogorovka group
• the novočerkassk group