Dobrovolskaya M.V., Reshetova I.K.
Key words: Saltovo-Mayaki culture, Alans, burial rite, anthropological materials, isotopic analysis, reconstructions of the nutritive traditions.

The article considers new data on anthropological materials from catacomb and pit necropolises of the Saltovo-Mayaki culture of the forest steppe and steppe zones in Eastern Europe. The reconstructions of the nutritive traditions of the buried people are staged based on the isotopic analysis of the bone tissue collagen. The intense concentration of C4 plants in their diet is found. That was very likely millet (Panicum miliaceum). Intergroup differences have been discovered in the collagen isotopic compound. In contrast to the consolidated isotopic specifications defined for the group from the catacomb necropolises there is a highly individual variability fixed in the sets from the pit burials. These facts consider suggesting that the Alans of the forest steppe area of the Don-Donetsk region had stable nutrition traditions, which also proves their common ethnical identity. A huge individual variety in the diets of the buried people from the pit burials of the steppe zone of the region might be connected with the absence of one single nutrition tradition. This gives an opportunity to suppose that it is unjustified to refer people from the pit burials to one ethnical identity.