BURIAL GROUNDS WITH RED OCHRE ON THE TERRITORIES OF KARELIA: PROBLEMS OF RESEARCH AND INTERPRETATION
Keywords:
archaeology, Karelia, Finland, Neolithic, Sandermokha cemetery, red ochre graves, calcined human bonesAbstract
In the 1960s – 1980s, the Stone Age objects called “red ochregraves” were studied on the territory of Karelia. The peculiarity of these monuments was the almost complete absence of bones due to the high acidity of the soil. Only fragments of two shin bones and a rib bone in burials No. 1, 27, 45 of the Sandermokha cemetery and a fragment of a finger phalanx from the Kladovets II parking lot have been preserved. The burials were distinguished by the following features: oval-elongated shape, a small depth of occurrence (10–15 cm), the thickness of the layer of ochre sand is from 8–12 cm to 15–20 cm, the size varies from 0.9×0.4 m to 2×0.55 m, orientation in the countries of the world varies greatly; in the layer of the part of the ochre spots and lenses, there are large rolled pebbles or boulders; in some ochre spots and lenses, there is no accompanying inventory, in others it is heterogeneous (there are fragments of Neolithic sperrings or pit-comb pottery, tools and waste from slate, flint, lydit and quartz, as well as calcined animal bones). On the territory of neighboring Finland, about 70 Neolithic and Mesolithic graves in red ochre are known. In 28 of them, fragments of human bones and accompanying equipment were found – amber and slate jewelry, flint arrowheads, which confirms the funerary nature of the monuments. Thus, at present, there is no reason to consider «red ochre graves» as funerary monuments.References
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