Древнейшие погребения элиты обских угров (богатыри и шаманы кулайской эпохи Сургутского и Нижнего Приобья)
Ancient Burials of the Ob’ Ugrians’ Elite (Bogatyrs and Shamans of the Kulayka Epoch of the Surgut Ob’ and Lower Ob’ region)

Summary/Abstract: Archaeologists of Sverdlovsk-Yekaterinburg and Tomsk in the taiga of the Surgut and Lower Ob’ River regions examined six burial objects of the 1st—4th centuries BC of Kulayka cultural and historical community with a large number of imported and local inventory. These include the graves of people located in different territories (a child, adults), the burial of ittarma-dolls, which were posthumous dummies of warriors who died in a foreign land, as well as a hoard with metal regalia of the shaman’s vestments. This indicates the beginning of an active social-economic stratification in the society of the Ob’-Ugrians and formation of the administrative, military, property and spiritual elite in it. The main reason for this was not the development of the producing economy, which was practically not present among the fishermen-hunters in the western regions of the taiga Ob’ region, but rather the integration of the north of Western Siberia in the system of the common Eurasian economy as a permanent supplier of furs, especially since the evolution of the northern (“fur”) branches of the Great Silk Road in the 1st century BC. At the same time, the first signs of social differentiation and the separation of the military class were traced here as early as the second half of the 1st millennium BC. This is confirmed by the finds of bronze and iron weapons of the steppe (Scythian-Sarmatian) and taiga (Kulaika) forms at forest sanctuaries, the first single copper-bronze anthropomorphous images in helmets and “sun crowns”, as well as the proliferation of miniature fortresses with powerful bastion-tower fortifications, likely places of residence of the Ugric elite. The architecture of such “towns” was borrowed from the forest-steppe tribes of the Tobol-Irtysh River region, and those from the Saka of the Aral Sea region.

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