THE PHENOMENON OF THE EARLY BRONZE AGE BURIALS IN THE STONE AND WOODEN CISTS WITHIN THE NORTH PONTIC STEPPE AND CRIMEA: STATE OF THE STUDY AND TSSUES OF INTERPRETATION

Abstract

This article deals with the history of research on the identification of the Eneolithic — Early Bronze Age Kemi-Oba culture of Crimea in the second half of the 1960s — the first half of the 1970s. The article examines various views on the cultural affiliation of this entity’s sites already in the early stages of its taxonomic development as a component part of the nomenclature of the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age cultures of the steppe Black Sea region and Crimea. More specifically, the study analyzes different views of A. O. Shchepinsky, O. M. Leskov, A. Hдusler, V. O. Safronov and N. O. Nikolaeva, who determined the main directions in the study of this issue. The Kemi-Oba culture was not initially identified as a culture of burials in ornamented stone and wooden cists. Polished undecorated flat-bottomed pottery and monumental burial architecture with the usage of stone structures were considered for the important attributive elements of this culture. The Kemi-Oba kurgan surved for a typical example characterizing the burial sites of this culture in Crimea. Later studies of O. Shchepinsky, D. Ia. Telegin, O. G. Shaposhnikova, V. M. Danylenko combined the Crimean Kemi-Oba culture and the Lower Mykhailka type of the steppe Black Sea region into a single cultural entity, and attributed the cultural affiliation of a number of Yamna graves in kurgans of the steppe Black Sea region based on pottery styles. However, it is possible to identify a trend of the research refocusing towards exclusively the burials in stone cists of the Early Bronze Age since the end of the 1990s, Note that the term «cists of the Kemi-Oba type» was assigned for the latter irrespective to the presence or absence of ornamentation on their walls. Moreover, a number of experts stared to consider cultural affiliation of such burials not only in the steppe Black Sea region, but also in Crimea, in the context of the Yamna entity. Therefore, the problem of studying the Kemi-Oba culture shifted to studying the phenomenon of burials in stone (and wooden in Crimea) cists and their cultural affiliation. In this respect, the appearance of burials in stone cists in the steppe Black Sea region can now be attributed to the period of the Middle Eneolithic, the chronological horizon of the Chernavoda I culture — the Lower layer of Mykhailivka settlement (Novopylypivka, Akkermen I, kurgan 11, burial 14), and associated with the formation of the complex kurgan architecture. In Crimea, burials of the Zhyvotylivka-Vovchanske type of the Late or Final Eneolithic can be considered as a chronological marker. This is confirmed by the data on relative chronology, as well as the radiocarbon date obtained for the burial in the «Kurban-Bairam» kurgan. The formation of such complexes as ‘Kemi-Oba’ should be associated with the Maikop-Novosvobodnensky influences from the North-Western Caucasus. Yamna entity does not have any relation to this phenomenon neither in case of Crimea, nor in the case of steppe Black Sea region.