Late Nomadic Burials with Muslim Rites in the Pokrovka IV Barrow Field in the Southern Ural

Abstract

At the end of the XIV – the very beginning of the XV centuries in the steppe and mountain-steppe zone of the Southern Ural, among the late nomadic population, religious dualism was practiced. According to the available archaeological data, barrow fields, containing both burials with a burial set typical for pagan nomads and with observance of such striking elements of pagan rituals as the burial of a horse, and burials with pronounced signs of Muslim rites (western orientation, absence of things, turning the head to the south, etc.), are known for the Golden Horde period in the steppes of the Ural-Volga region. The process of eradicating pagan traditions and replacing them with new rites can be traced most clearly in burial rituals. One of these monuments is the burial ground, considered in the article, located in the upper part of the Ural River in the east of the Orenburg region. Of the seventeen barrows, studied at the site, according to the set of signs of the burial rite, fourteen can be interpreted as Muslim ones. Spatial analysis of the monument shows that the pagan and Muslim burials, although they constitute a single necropolis, are located at a sufficient distance from each other. Pokrovka burial ground is not the only one in the region with such spatial structure (Ishkulovo II necropolis, near the settlement of Ural, etc.), which allows the authors to consider that adoption of Islam by the nomads of the Ural-Volga region was not a one-time phenomenon and covered a rather long period (XIV centuries). At the early stages, the spread of a new religion could be combined with traditional pagan burial rites, even within the same nomadic clan.