Anton A. Strokov
Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow, Russia (anton-strokov@yandex.ru)

Keywords: Taman peninsula, flat graves, social structure, cluster analysis, Late Antiquity.

The paper presents an attempt to identify social groups on the Taman peninsula in Late Antiquity using cluster and correspondent analysis of burial assemblages. Twenty-seven men’s and 28 women’s burials have been analyzed. The men’s burials comprise five clusters which can be divided into three social groups. In the women’s burials the distinctions are not so evident: there are several prestigious burials (similar to the men’s) in large vaults, whereas the other burials form an amorphous group which can be only provisionally divided into sub-groups. On the basis of the strap fittings, fibulae and red slip ware the burials can be dated to the 4th – first half of the 5th centuries AD.