Igor A. Kukushkin
Academician E.A. Buketov Saryarka Archaeological Institute at Karaganda State University, Karaganda, Republic of Kazakhstan
E-mail: sai@ksu.kz
Keywords: funeral rite, cremation, the Fedorovo culture, fire, embryo, ritual, semantics.

Dead body cremation, one of the characteristic features of the Andronovo (Fedorovo) ritualism, was widely practiced in a number of large regions within the area of the culture. As a rule, researchers associate cremation with the cult of fire and sun, with ideas about the purifying and regenerating power of the funeral fire. At the same time, the gap between the cremation site and that of the burial, which are always located in different places, is still difficult to explain. It is assumed that cremation ceremony was a preparatory stage and was intended to reduce the weight of an adult to that of a child. Children, as a rule, were not cremated and, obviously, served as a kind of weight standard required to reach of the land of the dead and the subsequent rebirth. This circumstance can be supported by the contracted position of bodies during inhumation which imitates that of embryo ready for birth in the new reality.

DOI: 10.31857/S086960630007215-5