Olga N. Korochkova, Anna V. Mosunova, Ivan A. Spiridonov, Vladimir I. Stefanov

Urals Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russia (Olga.korochkova@urfu.ru, ann36999@yandex.ru, z-is5@mail.ru, Stefanov_PNIAL@mail.ru)

Keywords: Urals, Bronze Age, Seima-Turbino type, sanctuary, burials, cremation, symbolic graves.

The paper analyzes the exceptional situation at Shaitanskoe Lake II (Shaitanka), a sanctuary of the Seima-Turbino type. On an area of over 1000 m2 we have discovered 4 cremation burials and 6 other features which may also be graves yet contain no anthropological remains, and hence are referred to in the paper as autonomous features. The grave goods from burials 1–3 and 8 and feature 10, primarily the bronze items (dagger with ornamented handle, grooved bracelets, including ones with spiral terminal), correlate with the time period when the sanctuary will have functioned, which is, according to the calibrated dates, the 19th – 18th cc. BC. Features 4–7 and 9, a compact group in the lakeshore part of the sanctuary, have yielded material from different time periods. It found its way into the pits at the time of their creation in the cultural layer which contained abundant Eneolithic finds. In the absence of direct arguments the features have been assigned, with certain reservations, to the category of Bronze Age symbolic graves.