Yurü V. Boltrik*, Victor V. Kropotov**

*Institute of Archaeology of NAS of the Ukraine, Kyiv (boltryk@ukr.net)

**Institute of Archaeology of the Crimea RAS, Simferopol (v-kropotov@bk.ru)

Key words: Black Sea Region, Sarmatians, barrows, burial mounds, Hellenism– Roman time.

The article presents the materials of three early Sarmatian burials studied in 1984 by the Azov Region new constructions expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy in Sciences USSR (the commander of the expedition Iu. V. Boltrik) near the urban settlement Akimovka in Zaporozhye Region. These secondary burials were found in the burial mounds at the depth of 0.9–1.1 m. Two of them (barrow 1 burial 2 and barrow 13 burial 5) are oriented heads to the North-West. The orientation of the third one (barrow 13 burial 1) has not been reliably ascertained as it had been destroyed by the robber trench. Among the grave goods there were a potters’ red-clay jar with a twisted arm, a potters’ red-clay bowl with the traces of a brown-red lacquer, and a bow-shaped tied fibula of the I series of the variant 1, keeping the features of the objects of the late La Tène scheme. These objects allow to date the complex to the 1st c. BC. Burial 1 from the barrow 13, apparently, accompanied by the potters’ red-clay bowl with the traces of the brown-red lacquer, should be referred to the first half of this century and the burial 5 from the same barrow containing the bow-shaped fibula should be referred to the end of the 1st c. BC or even to the turn of AD. Unfortunately, burial 2 from the barrow 1 contained grave goods with an undefined date. That is why the reference of this burial to the early Sarmats period is significantly conventional and is based on only the similarity of its ritual features with two other mentioned burials. Described complexes update our sprinkling of knowledge about early Sarmatian antiquities of the Black Sea Region and point at the close trade and economic relations of the region’s nomads with the late Scythian tribes.