Siberian Branch

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography

of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Inskoy Dol: A New Early Bronze Age Site in Western Altai

DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2018.46.1.041-050

Р.К. Dashkovsky¹ and N.F. Stepanova²
¹Altai State University, Pr. Lenina 61, Barnaul, 656049, Russia
²Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

This article describes Early Bronze Age burial mounds at Inskoy Dol, in the lowland zone of the western Altai. The cemetery includes two groups of mounds differing in funerary rite and burial goods. One of them reveals features typical of the Afanasievo culture (rounded cairns made of 2–3 layers of small and medium-sized stones, a stone enclosure, supine fl exed position of the buried, heads directed toward the west, ocher coloring, and egg-shaped vessels with pointed bottoms). The other group corresponds to the Kurota type (rounded cairns made of stones placed fl at in a single layer, supine fl exed position of the bodies, eastern orientation, ocher coloring, jar-shaped vessels). The Afanasievo and Kurota cemeteries, then, are separate but close to one another. The radiocarbon date of the Afanasievo mounds is the 29th to 27th centuries BC. Excavations at Inskoy Dol make it possible to specify the boundaries of the Afanasievo culture, suggesting that it was distributed not only over the highland, central Altai but over more westerly, lowland areas as well.

Keywords: Early Bronze Age, Afanasievo culture, Altai, funerary rite, ceramics