Excavations of a Barrow near the Village of Kayry in the Upper Reaches of the Tiligul Estuary

Abstract

In 2020, in the area of the village of Kayry (~ 65—70 km to NE from Odessa), one barrow was excavated, in which 15 graves were discovered. The earliest burials were 4 burials of the Yamnaya culture. One of them (the central grave) was accompanied by several processed stones (stelae). Two graves belonged to the Catacomb culture of different variants, or cultures (Ingul, for sure, and Donetsk, perhaps). In one grave (plundered) there was a vessel of Berezhnovsko-Mayevsky Srubnaya culture. Two graves of the Early Iron Age are the latest ones. One of them belonged to the Scythian culture (6th—5th centuries BC), the other — to the era of Late Nomads (11th—12th centuries AD). The construction of a medieval grave destroyed the central burial of the Yamnaya culture. In turn, the medieval tomb was looted. Almost all burials of the Bronze Age were built by the using of stone slabs. In the burials of the Yamnaya and Catacomb cultures, these were massive slabs that covered the grave pit (or catacomb).