SARMATIAN WARRIOR BURIAL IN A BARROW ON THE ARABATSKA SPIT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37445/adiu.2026.02.07Keywords:
Black Sea steppe, Azov region, barrow, grave, Sarmatians, dagger, bladed weapon, grave goods.Abstract
The burial assemblage of barrow 1, discovered in 2018 by the Arabatska Expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the NAS of Ukraine headed by Yu. Boltryk is presented in the paper. The Bronze Age barrow was located in the northern part of the Arabatska Spit, near the Shchaslyvtseve village, Genichesk district, Kherson region. This barrow was part of the group of four barrows that were located in a line for 1.68 km from the Sea of Azov to Sivash. The barrow was significantly damaged by plowing for vineyards. At the beginning of the excavations, the height of the barrow 1 was 1.3 m and the maximum diameter was 42 m. 36 graves from different periods were discovered in the barrow — from the Early Bronze Age to the Late Middle Ages. The grave no. 1 was one of the later ones in the barrow. It was located almost at the top of the barrow. The man aged 25—35 was buried in the grave in a typical Sarmatian position — lying supine, with his head directed to the northwest. Deep plowing (up to 0.5 m) partially destroyed the upper layer of the burial. The grave goods included the iron dagger and knife, ceramic jug, and a farewell meat food. In terms of construction, the grave probably belongs to the most common type of burial structures (regular narrow rectangular pits) which are found in all areas inhabited by the Sarmatians up to the finale of their life in the steppes of Eastern Europe. The burial rite (the position and orientation of the body) is characteristic of graves from the Early Sarmatian and Middle Sarmatian periods of the Dnieper-Don interfluve. According to the shape of the burial structure and the range of the parallels to the grave goods, the grave could be dated to the 1st century BC — 1st century AD. The dead warrior probably belonged to the one of Iranian-speaking Sarmatian tribes — the Rhoxolani, who according to ancient authors roamed in the territory between Borysthenes and Tanais. It is possible to assume that the man buried in the barrow could belong to a community that during the Early Iron Age controlled the use of local natural resources and trade transit from the Bosporus to the region of the Lower Dnieper hillforts.
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