Об «умерщвлении» предметов на тризне скифских курганов (по материалам Орликовой Могилы)

In 2018, in the north of the Kirovograd region, on the border with the Pravoberezhnaya Forest-Steppe, in the Orlikova Mogila mound (height 3.10 m, diameter 30-32 m), an inlet burial of a heavily armed Scythian warrior was excavated. Despite ancient and modern looting, the tomb contained a number of items, including bronze arrow-heads and fragments of Thasian amphoras. These artifacts determine the time of burial in the 30s of the 5th century BC. Around the embankment, on a plowed field, fragments of ancient amphoras were found, at least from 7 vessels, synchronous with the finds from the grave. Of particular interest are 15 bronze items - parts of horse harness, found among the stones of the crepe of the mound. They are also associated with the funeral feast in honor of the noble warrior. These are cheek-pieces, cheek-plates, a browpiece, nosepiece, vorvorka and pendants in the form of locks. Some items are decorated in animal style. Ten out of 15 items were deliberately broken with impact and chopping tools. In this case, the details of horse bridles on the funeral feast of the mound are not just symbolic burials of horses according to the principle “part instead of the whole” – pars pro toto, which is widely known in the nomadic world of the Early Iron Age. Breakage, cutting parts of horse equipment, semantically could mean not only the killing of the symbolic horses of a noble Scythian, followed by the resurrection of animals in the other world, but also to strengthen the very idea of the death of a particular owner in a particular society, with an undoubted belief in the subsequent rebirth in the next world. A few analogies of this situation are found in burials of the 5th century BC of Northern Black Sea, Lower Volga and Southern Urals. However, the earliest cases of deliberate damage to horse equipment are recorded in the monuments of 8th-7th centuries BC of Central Asia.