The Early-Sarmatian Burial in the East Crimea

The paper presents the materials of investigation of the burial that has been discovered in 2016 under a monumental stone construction / passway through a ditch in front of the Uzunlar bank, conditionally named ‘Bosporus Gate’. The burial was made in a tomb of the rectangular form, which had been placed in a ditch slope even before erection of the gate . The dead’s body had been North-West oriented. The grave goods included a jug and a bowl made of gray clay, a bronze mirror, earrings, an iron knife, jetty pendents and glass beads. These things allow dating the burial complex within the second half of the 1st century BC and, probably, the early 1st century AD. Such features of a funeral ceremony as the dead’ s body orientation in the northern sector, using an ordinary subrectangular tomb, using the burial place for only one body, the structure and placing of grave goods, etc., are typical for synchronous Early-Sarmatian burial complexes at the Northern Black Sea Region. The nearest of such complexes are located at 10 km to the West from the Uzunlar bank, in vicinities of the Astanino village. The only difference of the described complex consists in using the slope of earth mound / ditch, not a barrow, for burial. It is worth mentioning, that all of the known Early Sarmatian burial places of the Steppe Crimea are located in a chain order along northern border of the region, on the Black sea coast and Sivash – from the Perekop isthmus to the Tarhankut cape in the west and the Uzunlar bank in the east. The latter is considered now as the western border of the Bosporus kingdom. Such location, apparently, marks a way of nomads from the Dnieper region – one of the main areas of their settlement – to the city centers of the Northwest Crimea and Kerch peninsula. Because of the direct contacts to these centers, Sarmatians had got some items of antique manufacture: potter’s ceramics, jewels, fibulae, beads, etc., discovered in their burials.