The burials of the pre-Yamnaya time of the Georgievka burial ground on the right bank of Seversky Donets River

Based on studies of the Bronze Age burial barrows of Seversky Donets basin, several archaeological cultures and cultural groups of the Bronze Age have been identified. However, the source base for studying the most ancient burial barrows of the Late Eneolithic and Early Bronze Ages, marking the origin and approval of the burial barrow rite in on the territory of the Seversky Donets basin, is small, poorly introduced into scientific circulation and insufficiently studied. Two such archaic burials were recently identified during the study of barrow 10 of the Georgievka burial ground and make it possible to more representatively carry out a cultural and chronological analysis of rare local antiquities preceding the spread of Yamnaya Culture. One (burial 8) belongs to the Late Eneolithic Stage and is identified by the Post-Mariupol Culture of the steppe Dnieper and Northern Azov regions. These burials are distinguished by narrow oval or rectangular grave pits with rounded corners, elongated on the back position of the buried, oriented to the east with deviations. Specific are sets of broad shaped bone penetrations. The process of approval and distribution of the burial barrows on the right bank of the middle course of the Seversky Donets River is associated with the burials of this group. The second (burial 5) represents the type of burials in rectangular pits in which the deceased with a western orientation are laid in a crouched position on their backs with their hands along the body. The legs are bent knees up with the blockage to the left. The burials of this group characterize the peculiarities of the composition of the antiquities of the Early Bronze Age. Their ritual features lay at the heart of the funeral traditions transitional to the Early Yamnaya Culture period and could become leading at the stage of the formation of Yamnaya Culture. To determine the positions of the burials in question in the system of synchronous antiquities of the vast steppe zone of the Northern Black Sea region, the authors made the necessary cultural and chronological comparisons and determined their place among the antiquities of the Late Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age.