As a result of recent studies of the Late Neolithic Kerdyugen burial site in Yakutia, a series of radiocarbon dates have been obtained, which confirmed its belonging to the Ymyyakhtakh culture. A new interpretation of the features of the funeral rite is given. Probable causes of burial disturbance are considered. The presence of the dismembered bones of the second person may indicate the practice of human sacrifice. The author raises the question of the time of origin and legitimacy of distinguishing such social groups as warriors in the Late Neolithic of Northeast Asia in the context of clearly presented military differentiation.

Keywords: Kerdyugen burial, Ymyyakhtakh culture, warrior, shield, armor, rite, fire, sacrifice.

Introduction

A Late Neolithic burial of a warrior with armor and a shield made of bone plates, belonging to the Ymyyakhtakh culture, was discovered by A.D. Stepanov during the work of the Zarechny detachment of the archaeological expedition of the Yakut State University in 2004, 9 km north of the village of Churapcha in the Churapchinsky district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) [Alekseev et al., 2006]. During the exploration pit, rectangular bone plates (as it turned out later, parts of the shield) were first found lying shallow from the surface. During further clearing, plates of armor and fragments of human bones were exposed ("upper cluster", backbone No. 2). These remains gave the impression that the ancient grave was destroyed by a later burial of the XIX century. As the excavation continued, rows of shield plates and a frontal skull bone were discovered near the southern wall of the excavation. Only then did it become clear that the main burial (backbone No. 1) was relatively intact.

The characteristic development of the bones of the Kerdugen warrior, their defects and damage determine a physically very strong person with a large muscle mass. Traces of fractures of the left leg and compression injuries of the joints of the hands and feet, apparently as a result of a fall or jump from a great height (Chikisheva and Pozdnyakov, 2006) indicate an unusually extreme condition of the left leg.-

* This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation (EAR04 - 48416).

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a small way of life that goes beyond the traditional hunting economy.

This paper presents radiocarbon dates obtained after 2006 and new interpretations of the burial rite.

Description of the burial site

The burial is double. The almost complete skeleton (N 1) belonged to a mature male (40-50 years old [Chikisheva and Pozdnyakov, 2006]), buried in an elongated position on his back, with his head facing south - south-east (with a deviation of 22-23° to the east), parallel to the lake, hands resting on the pelvis. The burial equipment and bones were located at a depth of 7 to 35 cm. A few fragments of bones, called the " upper cluster "(backbone N 2), were placed in a pile at the right knee of the buried person (hereinafter referred to as backbone N 1). He was completely covered by a shield almost as tall as a man, consisting of more than 100 rectangular bone plates, most of which are broken. The plates on the shield were arranged horizontally in two rows. At the feet of the buried man was placed an armor made of more than 50 long horn plates with holes for fastening (Fig. 1).

Other accompanying equipment consisted of 30 stone objects (17 arrowheads, 5 flakes, a skobel, an end sub-triangular scraper, a multi-facet cutter, a chisel, a side scraper-knife, a sand abrasive, a slate knife, an adze) and 10 fragmented bone products (fragments of bow plates, a horn hollow, a broken harpoon without a point, a fragment of a broken harpoon). attachment (harpoon?), awl-shaped point with

1. Plan of the Kerdugen burial with shield and armor.

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Fig. 2. Plan of backbone No. 1.

3. Detail of the Kerdugen burial: a ground puncture spot with embers under the skull.

one-sided flattened nozzle, fragments of intermediary holders (including the rod of a fish hook?) and a product of unclear purpose) [Alekseev et al., 2006, Figures 10-12]. Part of the inventory was placed at the left leg of the buried person (Fig. 2). The arrowheads and bow linings were located on the right side in the thigh area. A polished slate knife was found in the headboard, and a polished slate adze with a massive petiole attachment was found near the right humerus.

Under the skull there was a small ground puncture spot with a few embers (Figure 3). A careful examination of the skull revealed that the faint reddish-brown spots on its surface were traces of burn, and not patina, as previously thought; this became clear when compared with the obvious traces of burn on the lower jaw. Apparently, the buried person was laid head down in a small fire that was not yet extinguished, or rather, the fire was lit directly under the head of the deceased. Previously, it was assumed that there was a symbolic rite of purification of the grave before placing the deceased in it [Ibid., p. 49].

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Radiocarbon dating

In 2008, six radiocarbon dates were obtained in the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the University of Arizona (see table). All of them, with the exception of one (AA-79317), are close to each other and agree with the dates of the Ymyyakhtakh burial grounds Chuchur-Muran (based on coal) and Deering-Yuryakh (based on bone)- 3,800 ± 400 (LE-1025) and 3,840 ± 50 (GIN-4794) BP, respectively. [Fedoseeva, 1980, p. 81; 1988, p. 86], generally confirming the preliminary dating of the Kerdugen burial. The date 26,780 ± 680 BC (AA-79317), obtained from a small fragment of a plate plate that had a characteristic fine-pored horn structure, indicates that primitive people could have used the bones of older animals found if necessary.

Funerary equipment and ideas about the souls of objects

The supply of funerary equipment is based on religious ideas about the afterlife as a continuation of the earth [Sternberg, 1936, p. 330]. The Ymyyakhtakh burial site of Kerdyugen, as well as other Neolithic sites, reflects religious views that are already quite developed in this regard, but there are interesting features here.

All bone products, except, perhaps, a shingle and a sharpened object at both ends, have long been broken or old. It seems that the grave was filled with fragments of objects that were no longer needed in everyday life and hunting, which generally contradicts traditional ideas about accompanying things that should serve the owner in the land of the dead themselves or their liberated souls [Levi-Bruhl, 1930, p. 249; Sternberg, 1933; Tylor, 1989, p. 241 - 251; Iokhelson, 2005, p. 325]. Thus, the harpoon does not have a point with a beard; judging by the absence of its fragment among the accompanying equipment and by the fracture, the tool was broken long ago, and not before burial. Other things are in the same state. For example, the rod-shaped point (which was once an arrowhead) has the appearance of an old blunted tool, which was obviously used as an awl.

If you follow the logic of the ideas of some peoples of the North and Far East, a long-broken thing should have no soul - the thing is dead, at least until it is reborn (repaired, remade). If such an object is placed in the grave, then the leitmotif contained in the ritual of spoiling and damaging (killing) things, the liberated souls of which accompany the deceased, is lost. In another case, when things are intended to accompany the deceased in an unchanged and serviceable state, broken or old items may also be useless for the deceased.

In general, the Kerdyugen burial does not show a consistent view of broken things as the antithesis of things in the world of the living and the world of the dead - "here is the dead - there is the living, here is the damaged-there is the unharmed..." [Kulemzin and Lukina, 1992, p.108], because not all objects look broken. S. A. Fedoseeva, who studied the materials of the Deering-Yuryakh burial ground, especially noted the absence of intentionally broken objects [1992, p. 92]. That is, probably, according to the beliefs of the Ymyyakhtakh people, the deceased should have been accompanied by the things themselves, and not by their liberated souls. Although it is not necessary to say this with all certainty, for the liberation of the soul of things, their damage

Radiocarbon dates of the Kerdugen burial

Lab Index

Material

Radiocarbon date, l. n.

Calibrated date (2 A), years BC*1

δ13C, ‰

АА-79323

Bone*2

3 940 ± 50

2 570 - 2 290

-19,8

АА-79328

Bone*3

3 635 ± 50

2 190 - 1 880

-21,3

АА-78934

Coal*4

3 630 ± 40

2 130 - 1 890

-22,9

AA-79316

Horn*5

3 765 ± 50

2 330 - 1 980

-21,1

АА-79317

Horn*5

26 780 ± 680

30 900 - 28 240

-21,5

АА-79782

Bone*6

3 830 ± 50

2 460 - 2 140

-21,7

*1 The calibration program Calibb Rev 6.0.1 is used; all intervals are rounded up to 10 years and combined.

*2 Date obtained from backbone collagen N 1.

*3 Date obtained from backbone collagen N 2.

* 4 Sample from the bonfire under the skull of kostyak No. 1.

* 5 Samples from armor plates; date obtained from collagen.

* 6 Sample from the shield plate; date obtained from charred collagen.

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it is not mandatory, and not all peoples adhered to this ritual. Animistic ideas about the souls of things have very ancient roots. E. B. Tylor recognizes the well-founded opinion of the American writer W. W. Smith. Alger says that "the custom of burying or burning objects together with dead people probably arose, at least in some cases, from the assumption that each thing has its own shadow" [1989, p.241-245].

It is possible that broken and old bone products, along with flint implements, formed the contents of the "hunter's bag" or "hiking bag" placed at the burial site at the left foot. In this case, we have almost unique evidence of such a careful attitude to such things in the Stone Age, since it is believed that people of that time tried not to burden themselves with unnecessary objects, when they could make any thing from improvised materials - stone and bone.

Curious is the presence of a hollow, and it was not originally broken. But in a burial of this rank, the presence of a dagger is more appropriate. It seems that the hollow was put in place of the dagger left for the living or completely absent, although it may also have been part of the contents of the "bag". It is interesting that the flakes were also in a general cluster, i.e. they obviously did not carry an independent ritual and sacred load here, being just a part of things from the "bag".

The position of the polished knife in the headboard may be related to the fire - apparently, they were used to prepare shavings, after which the knife was left in place. Indirectly, this is indicated by the light gray color of one of its sides, indicating a short-term thermal effect.

The location of the tesla at the right shoulder, rather than in a general cluster at the foot, is obviously explained by the placement of selected items (such as bows and arrows) on the right side. A special symbolism can be associated with this tool in general, since adzes and axes are quite rare accompanying objects in funeral rites. For example, there are no stone chopping tools in the Deering-Yuryakh burial ground, although metal tools were assumed to be present [Fedoseeva, 1992, p.92]; there are no such tools in the Chuchur-Muran burial ground [Fedoseeva, 1980, p. 61-86].

Of particular interest is the armor that was at the feet of the buried man. Its plates were arranged in clusters of three or four layers. In each cluster, the plates are connected to each other in one block, which was an integral part of the armor. The mutual arrangement of these blocks, as it turned out, does not correspond to their sequence in the armor, which makes it difficult to reconstruct it, which is far from complete. Most likely, the armor was laid in the grave in a half-disassembled and possibly incomplete state. The true motives for dismantling it and placing it at the feet of the buried person remain unknown.

The role of fire in the funeral rite

The location of the so-called cleansing bonfire is interesting. In the first publication, it was suggested that the grave pit was cleaned by fire [Alekseev et al., 2006, p. 49]. Examination of the skull showed that the fire was probably still burning when the deceased was laid in the grave, or, most likely, the fire was lit directly under his head, having previously prepared literally several branches that were set on fire after the deceased was laid. The fire burned briefly and lightly - the burning of the head here was, in fact, conditional.

The marked burning of the head is obviously not accidental and may be one of the few indications that the Ymyyakhtakh people have ideas about the connection of the head with the soul or one of the souls of a person living in the head or hair. Thus, among the tundra Yukaghirs, the "head" soul was considered to be the nunning [Iokhelson, 2005, p. 232]; according to Yakut beliefs, the main of the three souls, iye-kut, entered a person at birth through the crown of the head [Kulakovsky, 1923, p. 232]. 62]. In general, such ideas about finding a soul or one of the souls in the head, entering and exiting through it (mouth, nose, ears, crown) have a very wide range and, apparently, quite ancient roots [Tylor, 1989, p. 215-216; Iokhelson, 2005, p. 228-233; Gurvich, 1977, pp. 220-221; Frazer, 2001, pp. 244-246, 268-269]. The special significance of the head in the views of the ancients is evidenced by archaeologically recorded rites of burial of skulls [Fedoseeva, 1968, p. 25-27; Okladnikov, 1955, p. 317-318; Matveev, 1979, p. 28; Maringer, 1982; Keeley, 1996, p. 102; Novikov, Weber, Goryunova, 2010, p. 183, 185], as well as the notorious bounty hunting and skull cult. The head-burning ceremony was recorded at the Verkholensk burial ground (burials 21, 25 according to the new digitization), where the heads of those buried were completely burned, and even with the upper part of the torso [Okladnikov, 1955, p. 319; 1978, p. 30, 39].

The use of fire in funeral practice is interpreted unambiguously - it is considered as a "mediator between heaven and earth" [Lbova, Zhambaltarova, Konev, 2008, p.154]. The fire directly under the head of the buried person may have been associated with the transition of the soul to heaven to higher spirits or to the land of the dead. S. A. Tokarev admitted that there is some connection between the idea of the heavenly world of souls and the practice of corpse immolation, although in general he was absolutely not with the idea of-

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It agrees with the position put forward at the beginning of the twentieth century by a well-known English ethnologist-diffusionist [Rivers, 1914, p. 550-580]: "...one cannot, of course, agree with Rivers, who... he believed that faith in the heavenly world of souls gave rise to the custom of corpse immolation "(Tokarev, 1990, p. 197).

In addition, the fire was probably intended to purge the soul of evil spirits, to become an obstacle to its transformation into a malicious ghost. Another reason to neutralize the deceased could be death from illness. It was believed that a sick person is devoured by evil spirits who have taken possession of him instead of some stolen soul. These ideas are also quite universal and well-known among different peoples [Bogoraz, 1939, p. 12-17; Antropova, 1976, p. 258; Popov, 1976, p. 34; Eliade, 2002, p.64; Iokhelson, 2005, p. 230].

In any case, in the ritual of burning the head, one can see the role of fire as a purifying and protective force, as well as as a means of transporting the soul to the Upper World. This rite indicates, in our opinion, the special social status of the deceased.

Funerary orientation: Lena River-the way to the land of the dead

The orientation of the buried person along the line of the South-West Coast is parallel not only to the lake, but also to the Lena River (feet downstream). Comparison of the river with the mythical road to the world of the dead, located at the mouth, is common among many Siberian peoples (Sternberg, 1933; Anisimov, 1958, pp. 58-61). It is believed that you can get there by going down (or rafting) by the river. Ymyyakhtakh burials are oriented with their feet downstream, apparently so that the deceased does not make a mistake in the direction of their movement to the river mouth.

But the Lena River is located at a distance of 125 km to the east, and the lake runoff in the burial area, directed in the opposite direction (to the south-east, towards the Tatta River), was ignored. In this connection, it is obvious that the main spatial orientation of the Ymyyakhtakh people was in the cardinal directions, where the world of the dead was located in the north - at the mouth of the Lena River. The observed parallelism of the coastline, regardless of the direction of small river flows, indicates that the Lena River could be a conditional road to the land of the dead.

I would like to note that the Rodinka burial (attributed by some researchers to the Ymyakhtakh burial site), where the deceased was laid with his head to the east, his feet to the Panteleikha River and in general to the Kolyma River (Kistenev, 1980, p. 79-87), does not correspond to the spatial orientation of the Ymyakhtakh burials and, obviously, does not belong to them, coming closer According to this characteristic, the Belkachinsky ones are Tuoi - Khaya on the Vilyue River, Dzhikimda on the Olekme River, and Onnes on the Amge River, in which the buried are also oriented with their feet or head (Onnes burial) to the river.

The orientation of the grave along the river was probably due to the semantic meaning of the river as a mythical road connecting the worlds and leading to the world of the dead, which was located in the north and was associated with the Lower World. Of course, in the cosmology of the Ymyyakhtakh people there were ideas not only about the horizontal organization of space, with the idea of top and bottom - the Upper, Middle and Lower worlds, which is indirectly evidenced by the Ymyyakhtakh tradition of orientation of the buried people with their heads upstream, to the south, where the Upper World should be, and with their feet downstream, to the north, where - The lower world; but also about what the inhumation rite, accompanying equipment, and the use of fire indicate.

Burial violations

A number of bones (almost the entire skeleton N 2, the frontal part of the skull of the skeleton N 1), as well as some plates of the shield and armor have traces of air erosion and are distinguished by a fractured surface with a loose structure and a characteristic whitish color. The date obtained from bone # 2 is 300-400 years younger than the date determined from bone # 1, but it almost coincides with the date obtained from the coal from under the warrior's skull (see the table). In general, radiocarbon dating data indicate a one-time burial. Nevertheless, the position of the backbone N 2 and its fragmentation, together with the close location of the grave of the XIX century, make us associate them with a possible violation of the ancient burial.

Earlier it was assumed that the burial complex was violated by robbers. After careful in-house analysis of all the materials, two points can be seen in violations of the original position of the burial. The first is natural displacements during permafrost processes, which causes the shield plates and bones of the buried person to spread, and damage to some bone products, including the hollow, shield plates and armor. A protuberance of permafrost heaving formed under the right leg of the buried person raised part of the burial, exposing the skeleton No. 2 (Alekseev et al., 2006, Fig. 4). Most of these bones have unilateral weathering. Their lower part, facing the ground, remained untreated. So, on the lower side of the femur of the backbone N 2, even the following bones were preserved:-

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4. Accumulations of bones of the N2 backbone and arrowheads.

dy ven*. In our opinion, this indicates that the weathering of these bones is not the result of primary air burial.

The second point is related to violations of an explicitly external property.

1. Some disorders are caused by the activity of field mice or rats, because on the plates of the shield and on the frontal part of the skull there are traces of biting and acidic effects of urea, up to through holes. In addition, there are scratches on the armor and shield plates, especially deep ones on the softer horn plates of the armor. That is, the displacement of the plates could be the result of rodent activity, not robbers; air erosion on the skull and shield plates could have formed in burrowing passages.

2. The plates of the right edge of the shield were broken off during the laying of the burial pit of the XIX century (see Figure 1). Many other plates could have been broken due to the shallow location of the burial, i.e. as a result of pressure from above. As already mentioned, the initial impression was that the fragments of skeleton No. 2 were re-buried after accidental damage to the ancient burial site during the laying of the grave of the XIX century. But the presence of carefully placed flint arrowheads in the "upper cluster" (Fig. 4) suggests that its appearance cannot be associated with the burial of the XIX century. In addition, the mentality of the people of this time would not allow digging a grave pit, extracting the bones of another, even ancient burial.

3. It can also be assumed that one of the post-burial rites (neutralization) was performed, in which bones are removed from the grave and mixed, or bones from other burials are placed in it, including for the purpose of secondary burial. This post-burial (or secondary burial) practice has been known since ancient times and is very widespread (Matyushchenko and Sinitsina, 1988; Bazaliysky, 2006; Flerov, 2007). Violations related to a possible post-burial rite include broken shield plates lying over the right thigh of the buried person. In this place, as it turned out, the femur of bone N 1 is missing (the femur with destroyed epiphyses, which was originally assigned to bone N 1, as it turned out during an anthropological study, belongs to bone N 2) (see Fig. 2).

Special attention is drawn to the position of the tibia and the bones of the right foot. It can not be explained only by the action of permafrost deformation, as a result of which the foot bones were displaced after the tibia, because the amplitude of displacement relative to other bones and objects is too large.

Thus, it suggests that for some reason the right femur of the warrior (backbone N 1) was removed and the bones of the second backbone were placed. Such a rite was usually performed after the complete skeletonization of the buried person. However, everything suggests that the warrior's hip was removed a few days or weeks after burial.

It is most likely that the bones of the right leg of the buried person were removed and displaced as a result of the destruction of the grave by predators. Perhaps this is indicated by the absence of several phalanges and bones of the right hand. It seems that the femur was removed shortly after burial, when there were still tendon ligaments or even muscle tissue, by a large and strong enough predator to pull it out of the ground. The beast shifted, deformed and even tore the shield that was interfering with it, which apparently had a leather base (although the plates do not show obvious traces of claws and teeth). This is evidenced by the radial location of the shield plates at the site of damage (see Figure 1). The fang marks of a small predator (fox?)also indicate the intervention of predatory animals. on the broken fragment of the pelvis of the backbone N 2. In any case, the nature of injuries and dislocations is little associated with human actions.

The simultaneity of the burial of two people remains questionable, although all the facts indicate this. In any case, if there was a time gap, it was very small.

Apparently, in a short time after the specified violation, the grave was restored, because next to the newly collected (or just laid?) fragments of the backbone N 2 neatly, two clusters-

* The lower side is not called the ventral side of the bones, but the side on which they were located at the time of detection.

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arrowheads were collected and/or stowed, possibly lying in a quiver (see Figure 4).

Social status of the buried person

A shield reinforced with bone plates and a set-up shell made of horn plates indicate a significant development of military affairs already in the second half of the III millennium BC. The appearance of a reinforced shield implies the existence of a simple (leather) shield, the remains of which do not reach our days, as well as the existence of warriors with lighter weapons-without a shield and armor (simple hunters). An example of military differentiation is the specialization of warriors among the Eskimos of the Alaskan Bering Sea, where armored warriors were a structural part of the general military formation (Malaurie, 1974, p.147; Shnirelman, 1994, p. 109).

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that heavily armed warriors (in armor and with shields as tall as a man, not necessarily reinforced with bone plates) were a self-sufficient military unit. Most likely, they formed a special, relatively small group, a kind of backbone and elite of the Ymyyakhtakh clan army. According to V. A. Shnirelman, who refers to the well-known researcher of the war, K. V. Shnirelman. According to Otterbein (1970, p. 49-51), " defensive weapons certainly indicate relatively regular armed clashes. In addition, defensive weapons tend to be compared with a fairly differentiated society, the development of more or less centralized power systems, the emergence of professional soldiers, etc. "[Shnirelman, 1994, p. 36].

According to the research of K. According to Otterbein, few societies with a military organization were able to use shields together with armor, since its production was technologically laborious [Otterbein, 1970, p.49-50]. In our case, the plate shield is also a very complex product: making thin plates from the bones of moose legs (which, by the way, required a considerable amount), literally filigree fitting them to each other (so that there were no cracks at the joints), gluing on a leather base, grinding already glued plates-all this required considerable qualification from the master.

The production of such labor-intensive military equipment means that primitive warrior - hunters (or only a certain part of them-warriors or even masters) were forced to devote a lot of time to preparing for military operations and that armed conflicts have developed from short-term and episodic to frequent and systematic, apparently acquiring the character of an ongoing confrontation, the real motives of which remain for the time being unknown people. Although common causes, such as the causes of wars and military conflicts in general, can be assumed [Svod..., 1986, p. 36-37; Shnirelman, 1994; Thorpe, 2003, p.160]. Arrowheads in some bones from the Chuchur-Muran and Deering-Yuryakh burial grounds, bone carapace plates at the Burulgino (Indigirka River), Ulakhan-Segelenni sites, layer VIII (Tokko River) indicate that military clashes were not uncommon in the Ymyyakhtakh society (Fedoseyeva, 1980, p. 81, 210). fig. 87; 1988, p. 87; Alekseev, 1996, p. 56].

In our opinion, a full combat protective set of shield and armor, dismembered bones of another person (sacrifice?) they are quite an eloquent indicator that this is not an ordinary burial, but the burial of a warrior or leader-commander of the late Neolithic era (here we do not mean a tribal or supreme leader generated by the chiefdom institution, but a deservedly elected position in the conditions of a tribal organization). It is unlikely that a person who lived to 40-50 years, participated in numerous battles, had great physical strength and significant military experience, had the status of a simple hunter or ordinary warrior. Although for the burial of a leader (even an elected rank), the accompanying inventory is very modest - as already mentioned, things from the "hiking bag" look old and useless in everyday life. This suggests a field burial. Perhaps, from here only marked, but not complete burning of the head (due to lack of time?).

A human sacrifice?

One of the mysterious circumstances in the Kerdugen burial is the presence of fragmented bones of the second person (skeleton No. 2), judging by the fragment of the pelvis-male. It is assumed that these are the bones of one person, because there are no repetitive ones: the radial and ulnar bones of both hands, the right shoulder, the right scapula and the left clavicle, the left tibial and femoral, a fragment of the pelvis and various small fragments. All long bones are without epiphyses; some of them are broken, others are destroyed by natural factors.

It seems to us that the scattered bones of the" upper cluster", stacked in a neat pile (it does not matter whether it is simultaneously with the main burial or a little later), represent an act of ritual sacrifice of a person. Human sacrifice is considered to be exceptional and

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having a special power, which is hidden in the primitive ideas about the sacredness of blood as the embodiment of human life force [Tylor, 1989, p. 469; Kanevsky, 1998, p. 20, 21, 193; Eliade, 2008, p.19]. The motives could be different: giving, asking, expiatory, thanksgiving, etc. It should be noted that human sacrifices are most often associated with some crisis situations, including wartime [Zubov, 1997, p.262].

It is possible that the act of sacrifice was accompanied by cannibalism, although there is no direct indication of this, except for the absence of epiphyses. Ritual cannibalism is based on primitive ideas about a certain life force transmitted with human flesh [Lumholtz, 1889, p. 272; Levi-Bruhl, 1930, p. 22; Ksenofontov, 1992, p. 69-70; Kanevsky, 1998, p. 20-21, 193; Frazer, 2001, p. 164-165]. In the Khosun (heroic) traditions of the northern peoples, there are references to the victors eating the bone marrow of the defeated [Ksenofontov, 1992, p. 236 - 237, 240 - 241, 248 - 249, 254 - 256; Gurvich, 1977, p. 152-153].

According to S. A. Tokarev, human sacrifices are inherent in "peoples who have reached a relatively high level of social development, with a distinct class structure" [1990, p. 597]. If we follow this thesis, then the victim could be a slave, although, most likely, he was a prisoner of war. Captured soldiers, apparently from the earliest stages of human development, were most often tortured, beaten, and / or killed (Malaurie, 1974, p.134-135; Otterbein, 2000; Nefedkin, 2003, p. 177-178). There is a lot of evidence about the sacrifice of slaves and prisoners of war, their dismemberment and eating in archaic societies (Kanevsky, 1998; Propp, 1998, p. 186-187; Shnirelman, 1994, p. 26; Lambert, 2002, p. 210, 212, 221).

Conclusion

The Kerdugen double burial is not only one of the unique monuments in Siberian archeology, but also raises a number of questions. A series of radiocarbon dates allows us to speak about the simultaneous burial of two people or a very small chronological gap. The presence of dismembered bones of a second person (possibly a prisoner of war sacrificed) indicates a high or special social status of the buried person-a distinguished warrior or military leader (one of the leaders). Researchers of Australian Aborigines note such an exceptional attitude when burying selected or outstanding members of the collective: "The burial of leaders, influential old men, and brave warriors was accompanied by particularly complex rituals" (Tokarev, 1990, p.182). If it really was an act of sacrificing a prisoner, then it must be connected with some cult, ritual, which, perhaps, implies the existence of a social group involved in it. At the same time, the totality of materials of the Ymyyakhtakh culture in the region does not yet give grounds for identifying any specialized community, such as a secret or military one, to which such a ritual could be attributed. Nevertheless, this fact sets a kind of precedent for raising the question.

The shield and armor that could serve the living members of the collective were obviously considered personal property (by social status?), i.e. these things were made by their owner or by his order and, despite the labor costs of making them, were supposed to accompany the deceased. The existence of the right of ownership to objects of individual use among the ymyyakhtakh people was noted by S. A. Fedoseyeva when studying the Chuchur-Muran burial ground [1980, p. 210]. Probably, the Kerdugen burial indicates the beginnings of private property, maturing against the background of the complexity of social labor, its specialization, individualization and, in fact, alienation on the basis of exchange. The differentiation of activity itself is a tendency that leads to a complication of the living standards of a potestar society, generating internal contradictions and conflicts, and further serves as one of the reasons for its disintegration.

It can be assumed that in the depths of the Ymyyakhtakh society (at a certain stage - probably with reaching the peak of its development), some features of the transegalitarian level have matured. And military conflicts, along with the significant development of military affairs (advanced weapons, functional military differentiation) and, possibly, closed (secret) rituals, i.e., with what we recorded in the study of the Kerdugen burial, were an external expression of socio-economic development. Another evidence of this stage in the evolution of the Ymyyakhtakh culture is the materials of the Deering-Yuryakh burial ground, which can be classified as elite. These traits fully meet some of the social and economic criteria for identifying transegalitarian hunter-gatherer communities proposed by Canadian scientists D. Owens and B. Hayden [Owens and Hayden, 1997].

With the discovery of the Kerdugen burial site, researchers are faced with the question of the time when such social groups as warriors emerged and whether they should be singled out (but not as a druzhin formation).-

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and their specialized differentiation. In addition, the presence of military specialization among men of a gens or tribe raises the question of the existence of various organizations in the late Neolithic of Northeast Asia: male unions (when all men are warriors), age groups (division and specialization of warriors by age categories), military nobility (in its conditional meaning as a special and deserved social or cultural organization). age group).

At the same time, it should be recognized that the social and especially economic context of the emergence of such groups of warriors among the carriers of the Ymyyakhtakh culture of the late Neolithic remains largely unknown. One thing is clear: there have been some changes in the socio-economic development of society, and they have found expression precisely on the military path. In conclusion, I would like to quote the opinion of the well-known researcher of religion and culture M. Eliade, with whom we agree: "If it is impossible to reconstruct..., then we must at least find analogies that can, at least indirectly, shed light... light" [Eliade, 2008, p. 18].

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