V. Malashev

The main identifying features of late Sarmatian culture are kurgan burials in narrow rectangular pits and narrow burial niches, usually in the western wall (Fig. 1, 1, 2); wide square burial pits and shouldered pits (Fig. 1, 3, 4) and burials in catacombs of a specific configuration (Fig. 1, 5) are encountered much less frequently. Northward orientation prevails. Deformation of the skull can also be considered as an identifying feature. The chronological boundaries of the culture are middle of the 2nd – the 4th c. AD. Data from the last two decades of research allows to rectify the upper chronological boundary for the Late Sarmatian culture. So far, in relation to the North Pontic region, the Lower Don and the Volga-Don interfluve we can speak of only a small group of complexes belonging to the culture in question and dating to the 4th c. No 4th-c. burials are known in the steppe area of the Southern Urals. Complexes dating to that time are preserved only in some areas of the Volga region. Consequently, in the 4th c. Late Sarmatian culture as an integral cultural phenomenon is practically absent throughout the territory of East European steppes; its upper chronological boundary can be confined to the end of the 3d – beginning of the 4th cc. In the 4th c., burials of a different cultural appearance (in catacombs) spread in the North Pontic region and the Lower Don; they have their source elsewhere than the Late Sarmatian burial tradition (Fig. 2). This ritual custom was formed on the basis of other cultural traditions, in particular, Central Caucasian ones.