Viktor S. Aksenov
Kharkov Historical Museum, the Ukraine (aksyonovviktor@gmail.com)
Keywords: Saltovo-Mayatskoe culture, Bulgars, upturned articles, deliberate intrusion into the burial.

The paper suggests an explanation of the presence of burials with dismembered human skeletons in the Netaylovka cemetery of the Saltovo-Mayatskoe culture. The investigations of 2006–2014 recorded secondary digging into pre-existing graves took place in a number of burials. Remains of the original filling wear traced near the walls of grave pits. After the penetration into the burial and the completion of certain acts the pit was filled up. As a result, some artefacts, human bones (usually the skull lacking the lower jaw) and either intact or deliberately broken vessels taken from the bottom of the grave pit found themselves in the upper layers of the filling. The author relates secondary digging into grave pits with early rituals. This hypothesis is supported by the case of burial 529 where two vessels were encountered in the upper layers of the secondary filling. One of them, a kitchen pot, was turned upside down while the other, rectangular in plan, had its bottom deliberately pierced. These finds imply that burials were dug into with ritual aims. According to the ethnographic data, upturned articles mark the incorporation of the deceased into the world of the dead. In this context, in conjunction with the delibeberate opening up of the burial, they mean not only the completion of the passage of the deceased to the nether world but the definitive ‘sealing’ of the grave closing the passage between the worlds of the living and the dead as well. It enables us to suggest that the Netaylovka community practiced a rite akin to the South Slav ritual dvostruko sokhranivane or razkopalki performed three, five, and seven years after the interment. Burials with the traces of secondary digging into grave pits are in this case indicative of the so-called concluding ceremony signifying the end of mourning and making the death complete and irreversible.