Burial rite of the population of the Golden Horde city of Madjar: problems of study and debatable issues

Abstract

The paper deals with some issues in the historiography of the burial rite of the population of the Golden Horde city of Madjar. From 1989 to 2020, some small sites in the trade and craft quarter and in the cemetery in Madjar were examined. Recently, craniological, archeozoological and palynological studies have been carried out. Since the beginning of the 2000s, a number of valuable archival materials of the XVIII–XIX centuries have been found and published. In 2021, the boundaries of the ancient settlement were established. Alongside with these achievements, there has been a lag in the study of the burial rite of the city’s population, which was caused by insufficient study of the city’s cemetery. In 2020, I.B. Tishchenko excavated 10 burials in the north-western part of the cemetery, significantly adding to the available source base. In 2022, E.I. Narozhny, I.B. Tishchenko and A.A. Sazonov published a series of articles with the analysis of the burials which had been studied in 2020. The articles contain controversial statements that do not take into account the materials of the research on the Madjar necropolises and some other Golden Horde sites. The Madjar cemetery needs large-scale research.

Keywords

• archaeology
• city of madjar
• cemetery
• v.a. gorodtsov
• burial rite
• studies
• typology