On the discussion about the origin and cultural affiliation of the first burial mounds in the steppes of Eastern Europe and Ciscaucasia

Introduction. The introduction outlines the problems of studying the early stage of mound construction in the steppe zone of Eastern Europe, shows the history and discussion character of their study. The methodology of the investigation was based on the developed principles of archaeological typology of funerary rites, features of the mutual occurrence of things in complexes, determination of the chronology of cultures by diagnostic types of things for the epoch, application of dates of radiocarbon definitions with verification of the latter by serial samples, not by single definitions. Materials and analysis. In the section “Localization and cultural affiliation of the oldest mounds” according to the burial rite and inventory of more than 40 mounds in the territory of the Lower Volga region, Ciscaucasia and Don, the cultural unity of the Berezhnovka type mounds with the Khvalynsky burial ground is traced. They are preceded the Yamnaya (Repin stage) culture (Pit grave culture). The first mounds date back to the time preceding the Maykop culture in the Ciscaucasia. The similar mounds are badly known to the west of the Dnieper. The most ancient mounds arose among the Eneolithic population of the eastern part of the Eastern European steppe. Later in the early Yamnaya period, this tradition is fixed in the west. In the section “Chronology of the emergence of the Kurgan tradition”, by analogyof rites and inventoryestablished the relative chronology of the beginning of the mound construction in the cultural block Gumelnitsa-Karanovo VI- Varna-Kojadermen-Tripolye ВI-BIBII, dating by the 5th millennium BC. Results. Due to the radiocarbon dating, the first barrows in Ciscaucasia arose no later than the middle of the 5th millennium BC. Contribution of authors in writing the article is associated with specialization of professor N.L. Morgunova with the problems of the Eneolithic and Bronze Age of the Volga region and the Volga-Urals, of professor S.N. Korenevskiy with study of mounds of the Eneolithic and Maikop culture of Ciscaucasia.