Children’s burials of the Alakul Culture in the Southern Trans-Urals: reconstruction of age groups

Abstract

The proposed study concerns the Alakul Culture whose sites are located in the forest-steppe and steppe zone of the Southern Trans-Urals and are dated to the 18th–17th cc. cal BC. The work is based on the materials of the published burial grounds: Urefty I, Кulevchi VI, Stepnoye VII, Тasty-Butak 1, Lisakovsky I, Alakul, and Tashla 1. One of the most remarkable features of the Alakul cemeteries is that children constitute between 50 % and 80 % of all the interred. In this work, 212 burial pits (242 individuals) were analysed. The aim was the reconstruction and interpretation of children’s age groups of the Alakul population in the Southern Trans-Urals by means of the analysis of the specifics of the children’s burial rites and grave goods. The children’s burials were divided into three groups in accordance to the age-at-death: infants (0–2 years old), children (2–10 years old), and adolescents (10–15 years old). Next, the grave goods of children from the different groups were studied; specif-ics of the deposition of grave goods for the different age groups were analysed. Comparing the variations in the children’s burial rite, it can be concluded that the place of children in the social structure of the Alakul society was quite important, despite the differences in the structure of the burial pits and the content of the grave goods. First of all, this is evidenced by the number of children's burials at the sites, which exceeds the number of the adult’s burials, and secondly, by the presence of the children's buri-als performed in accordance with the ‘adult’ version of the rite, including the position in the grave pit and the sets of jewellery. The youngest age group (infants, from the birth to two years old) was the most numerous. Sixty one individuals (69.3 %) from this group were buried only accompanied by pottery or with gender-neutral grave goods. In the older children's age group (2–10 years old), a third of the individuals were buried with a large amount of jewellery, a third without grave goods, and the rest with astragali or with gender-neutral grave goods. The adolescents (10–15 years old) is a relatively small category in terms of the number of the interred; their funeral rite, judging by the few well-preserved burials, was identical to that of the adults (for example, the Alakul burial ground, mound 13, pit 9). We can conclude that by the age of 13–15 adolescents were reaching the full social adulthood.