PATRIMONIAL BURIAL GROUNDS OF NOMADS OF THE GOLDEN HORDE IN THE TERRITORY OF KALMYKIA

Abstract

Large cemeteries of nomads of the second half of the 13th–14th centuries in the steppes of Eastern Europe are quite rare, so it is not accidental that specialists show great interest to them. By the present time in the territory of Kalmykia two nomadic cemeteries have been investigated, which arose during the second half of the 13th–14th centuries. The fi rst burial ground was discovered on the lands of the state farm "Ijil" in the Oktyabrsky district of the Republic of Kalmykia. Of the 10 burial mounds studied, 8 contained burials of the Golden Horde time. The deceased were buried on their back, mostly heads to the northeast, only in two cases to the
north and one to the west and east. The funeral inventory contained bony sticks, silver pendants in the form of a question mark, a creed, stirrups and other fi nds. According to G.A. Fedorov–Davydov, pendants in the form of a question mark and bone sticks appeared in the steppes of Eastern Europe during the Golden Horde period. The second burial ground of 10 earth embankments was discovered in 2007 in the area of. Small Derbets of the Maloderbetovsky district of the Republic of Kalmykia. The funerary structures were pits with shoulder straps, where the dead lay mostly in the head on the west. They were made for a short time and belonged to the same generic group.Concerning the religious aspect of the graves listed above, it should be said that in Ulus Juchi,
along with the cult of Tengri, representatives of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity took a prominent place. And the popularity of this or that world religion depended on dynamically changing historical conditions.