Objects of xianbei period of the Karban-I complex (Northern Altai)

Abstract

The article presents the publication and diverse interpretation of materials from excavations of two objects of the Bulan-Koby culture, investigated in 1989 by an archaeological expedition of the Barnaul State Pedagogical Institute (now the Altai State Pedagogical University) at the Karban-I burial ground in Northern Altai. As a result of the study of mound № 15, a single inhumation of a 16-17 year old girl with a few accompanying equipment, which included two iron buckles, a bronze earring, and a stone bead, was revealed. The features of the burial ritual (a stone embankment with an oval crepe, a shallow grave pit, a burial chamber in the form of a stone box, a corpse position stretched out on the back with its head in the western sector of the horizon without a horse) demonstrate that this object belongs to the Karban burial tradition of the population of the Bulan-Koby culture of Altai. A comparative analysis of the artifacts found provides grounds for dating the burial mound № 15 to a period not earlier than the 2nd century AD. The authors concluded that the deceased had a low lifetime social status. Mound № 16, which did not contain the remains of the deceased or any items of inventory, was interpreted as a «miniature» cenotaph. The published materials expand the corpus of archaeological and anthropological sources for the study of the society of pastoralists of the Northern Altai in the Xianbei period (2nd — first half of the 4th centuries AD).