The pottery of the Catacombs differs from the primitive and uniformly shaped dishes of the ancient pit culture. Known flat-bottomed pots with convex sides and a narrowed neck, the surface of which is decorated with an ornament applied by prints of a twisted rope, comb teeth or just a sharp object. The motives of the ornament are triangles, zigzags, but circles and spirals are more common, reflecting the cosmic ideas of the ancient farmers about the solar deity and mysterious plant principles that turn grains into stems, which in turn give rise to many of the same grains.

      A metallurgical center was located on the territory of Donbass. This is also confirmed by the finds in the Donetsk catacomb burials of stone beaters, which were used for crushing ore before washing and smelting. In the inventory of the catacomb culture, there are bronze items: leaf-shaped knives, axes with eyelets, awls and bronze decorations, but most of the tools were still made of stone and bone. In the Dmitrovsky mound No. 6 in the Zaporozhye region, at the entrance to the burial chamber, a wooden catacomb cart with a fully preserved wheel, 5 thousand years old, was found. A two-wheeled cart with a preserved wheel 0.6 m in diameter is known from the Tyagunova Mogila catacomb burial in the Zaporozhye village of Maryevka. In the burial complex Ulan IV of the Western Manich catacomb culture in the Rostov region, a four-wheeled carriage was discovered, made in the XXIII century BC. e.

      Skulls of the catacomb stage are distinguished by brachycrania and a higher vault than in the Yamnaya culture. Male skulls are characterized by a high mesocranial cranium, a highly profiled wide face, wide cheekbones, a high nose bridge, and a very large protrusion of the nasal bones. In the steppe Dnieper region, there are three craniological options:

      – brachycranial – does not find analogues of the Bronze Age.

      – mesocranial – reveals a distant resemblance to the skulls of the Afanasyevsk culture of Altai.

      – dolichocranic – similar to the Noua and Srubnaya culture groups.

      If we talk about the catacomb culture, apparently, the rite of rendering harmless the dead, dismembering dead bodies to neutralize their harm to the living, was not only inherited from the pit, but also received further development. So, among the catacomb tribes, the custom of decapitation (separation of the head) became widespread, which can be considered on the example of the Middle Don catacomb culture.

      Finds of burials with detached skulls are recorded throughout the entire territory of the Middle Don catacomb culture from the Seversky Donets to the Don-Volga interfluve (the Khoper River). On the territory of the Middle Don, among more than 400 burials of the Middle Don catacomb culture, five burials with skeletons are known, in which the separation of the skull of the buried person has been reliably recorded.

      All examined burials were accompanied by ocher, which was located both in separate burial places and completely covered the skeleton of the deceased. In each burial, ocher, as it were, emphasizes the special ritual significance of the objects it accompanies. This type of “special burial” is distinguished by a variety of accompanying inventory. The set of implements in each burial is individual, but a common feature for all burials is its originality. Almost all decapitated burials were accompanied by animal bones. In addition, a particularly interesting find is two divination bones. According to some researchers, “dice”, but rather oracle bones, that is, the buried person was a representative of the priestly group. “Dice with signs” or dice, namely the oracular dice, originally had a cult character, were the prerogative of a certain class associated with the performance of priestly functions. The flute and the bone hairpin (Vlasovka 12/3) are among the cult objects. The deceased already have an artificial deformation of the skulls. According to A.T. Sinyuka, all burials, where the burial rite was used under the mound, indicate the high social status of the deceased. Only prominent representatives of society and their immediate entourage could claim burials under the mound. But even from this series of burials, decapitated burials stand out according to special features. Researchers believe that it is possible to assert with a fair degree of confidence that decapitated burials are not a specific feature of a particular culture of the catacomb community, but most likely have a supracultural nature, reflecting the complex social structure of tribes – carriers of catacomb traditions. The burial place of a teenager girl was found. It was hammered in with boulders weighing hundreds of kilograms, which speaks of a lot of fear inspired by such a young creature. But the belief in the “malefic” dead seems obvious and proven.

      Srubnaya culture

      Srubnaya cultural-historical community is an ethnocultural association of the late Bronze Age (XVIII – XII centuries BC, according to other estimates – XVI – XII centuries BC. Some scientists, like I. Berestnev S.I., that the Timber culture existed until IX BC, widespread in the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe between the Dnieper and the Urals, with individual monuments in Western Siberia and the North Caucasus.It was originally identified as a culture in 1901—1903 by the Russian archaeologist V.A.Gorodtsov, but in the 1970s, N. Ya. Merpert and E. N. Chernykh drew attention to local differences within culture and introduced the concept of “timber-frame cultural and historical community” into scientific circulation. Represented by monuments of the Pokrovskaya (XVIII – XV centuries BC) and Berezhnovsko-Mayevskaya (XVII – XII centuries BC) log cultures, representing settlements, necropolises, workshops, mines, treasures and single finds. Dwellings – dugouts, semi-dugouts and ground. Necropolis are represented by burial mounds and soil commodity burial grounds. In the kurgan stratigraphy, log burials occupy the upper position in relation to the tombs of the pit and catacomb communities. The ceremony provided for the burial of the deceased in pits or wooden log cabins in a bent position, on the left side, hands in front of the face. There are also known cases of cremation. Burial items are represented by sharp-ribbed and canned vessels, less often – metal items. Changing climatic conditions, depletion of natural resources and overpopulation led to a sharp decline in the population and cultural transformation of the tribes of the Timber community. The pioneer of the log culture was V. A. Gorodtsov, who in 1901—1903, in the process of researching the barrow antiquities of the Seversky Donets, turned his attention to twisted burials in wooden frames – log cabins. In accordance with the design features of the burial structure, the culture allocated by him was called Srubnaya. The concept of the origin of culture from the Poltava monuments of the Volga region and its migration at a later stage was developed in the mid-1950s by O.A. In the 1970s, N. Ya. Merpert and E. N. Chernykh turned their attention to local differences within the Srubnaya culture, but the selection of individual local variants or cultures, in their opinion, at that time was problematic. Later, in the course of scientific research, a number of researchers turned their attention to the anthropological,