MOSCOW, December 11. Scientists from Samara University, the Institute of Academy of Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan for the first time discovered a burial in the Nizhny Novgorod region recording traces of presence in the Volga region in the 1st century AD. e. Western Finns. According to researchers, not only the found objects of material culture, but also traces of the burial of warriors with the upper jaws of killed enemies make it possible to attribute the monument to the Piseraly-Andreevsky group.
A group of scientists from the Samara National Research University named after academician S.P. Korolev (Samara University), the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IA RAS) and the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan in 2023 discovered on the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod region a unique archaeological site with burials of three periods: V-IV centuries BC e., 1st century AD e., II-III centuries AD. e. According to experts, military and household items found in the burial ground allow us to judge which culture inhabited the nearby territories in different eras.
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As Oleg Radyush, a researcher at the Department of Archeology of the Great Migration and Early Middle Ages at the Institute of Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted, more significant finds indicate the horizon attributed by experts to the 1st century AD. e. It belongs to the monuments of the Piseral-Andreevsky group — like the famous Andreevsky Kurgan in the Republic of Mordovia. On the territory of the Volga region, only a few such monuments are known, thanks to which it is possible to establish the time and geography of migrations of various ethnic groups at the turn of eras.
The Sursko-Sviyazhsk interfluve, where the finds were made, was an intermediate period at the turn of eras territory between different ethnocultural groups: Western and Eastern Finns, said specialists from Samara University. The study of this area is aimed at establishing the time of the appearance of Western Finns in the Volga region — the ancestors of the Mari, Mokshans and Erzyans.
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“We found military equipment in our Pilninsky burial ground identical in appearance to those discovered at St. Andrew’s Kurgan. Chain mail, spearheads, helmets, swords and arrows clearly allow us to connect these two archaeological sites,” noted Radyush.
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However, if objects of material culture could have entered the territory of the Sursk-Sviyazh interfluve as a result of trade, then burial practices more accurately characterize the ethnocultural composition of the population, noted the leading researcher of the Scientific Research Laboratory of Archeology of Samara University Sergey Zubov.
In the horizon of the 1st century AD. e. Researchers have discovered burials with the upper jaws as trophies, a practice widely used in burials on St. Andrew's Mound in the 1st-2nd centuries AD. BC, where several carved human upper jaws were strung through specially made holes onto the reins of a bridle.
“As part of the hypothesis about the use of parts of the human body as a kind of military trophy, we can talk about the heads of enemies, and the jaw fragments of skulls most likely acted pars pro toto, that is, as a part instead of the whole,” said Zubov.
27 September, 03:00
The researcher explained that in the life of mankind for many millennia, decapitation was an integral attribute in the sacred and military spheres of different societies. And the population of the Volga-Ural region is no exception here. Rather, on the contrary, in the era of the early Iron Age, this tradition in the region reached the peak of its development, as evidenced by materials from excavations of several necropolises of this time.
Making “war trophies” from parts of the human body, cutting off the heads of enemies, and using them in funeral rituals human sacrifices at the funerals of noble warriors makes it possible to study another side of the military subculture within the framework of the general traditions of beliefs of the ancient population, Zubov emphasized.
Historians adhere to the hypothesis that the separation of the Western Finns into a separate group occurred as a result of their migration from the east, however, they cannot determine exactly when this resettlement took place, experts noted. They explained that it is archaeological excavations of little-studied monuments of the Sursk-Sviyazhsk interfluve that can shed light on the ethnogenesis of the peoples living in the territory of the modern Volga region and the Urals.