Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers of the Baikal Region, Siberia: Bioarchaeological Studies of Past Life Ways

4. Variability in Bronze Age Mortuary Practices in the Little Sea Microregion of Cis-Baikal

Variability in Bronze Age Mortuary Practices in the Little Sea Microregion of Cis-Baikal Hugh G. McKenzie The Little Sea (Ol’khon) region of Cis-Baikal contains the best record of Bronze Age hunter-gatherer adaptations in the entire Cis-Baikal. A recent analysis of the Bronze Age hunter-gatherer cemetery Khuzhir-Nuge XIV (KN XIV), located on the western shores of Lake Baikal’s Little Sea, revealed that the site was divided into three well-defined spatial clusters that were created and maintained through the reproduction of enduring social practices over a period of approximately 340–660 years (Weber et al. 2005; McKenzie, Weber, and Goriunova 2008). Interestingly, the three clusters did not appear to signify a single dimension of variability, but instead encoded multiple distinctions, including age at death and at least two different types of group affiliation. Our efforts to provide more specific interpretations about the nature of these groups are hampered by the paucity of comparative regional analyses . In particular, we currently have a poor understanding of the scale of the social units that were associated with Little Sea cemeteries. Do individual mortuary sites represent entire communities? Did multiple contemporaneous communities use the same cemeteries? Or, did individual communities use multiple sites to inter smaller social units such as kinship lineages, status groups, or individuals? When KN XIV is considered as a whole, the fact that it contains both males and females, as well as children, adolescents, and adults, implies that site membership was not particularly restrictive—at least in terms of age and sex—and so may have acted as a community cemetery in which a relatively broad cross-section of the population was interred (McKenzie, Weber, and Goriunova 2008). Thus, the spatial organization of KN XIV into rows and clusters would seem to represent intra-community distinctions such as kin- ‹ 4 › 88 Hugh G. McKenzie ship or status groups. Without comparison with surrounding cemeteries, however, it is difficult to evaluate this suggestion or to know how representative it might be of Little Sea mortuary practices in general. Through a survey of eight additional Little Sea Bronze Age cemeteries, including Kurma XI which was also excavated by BAP, this chapter explores the extent to which the structure of mortuary variability previously documented at KN XIV is also evident at contemporaneous mortuary sites in the same area (Fig. 4.1). Here, we present detailed information about two cemeteries, KN XIV and Kurma XI, with the remaining seven (Uliarba, Sarminskii Mys, Khadarta IV, Shamanskii Mys, Shide 1, and Ulan-Khada II and IV) being described on the accompanying DVD. However, the findings and interpretations for all nine of the sites are also presented in this chapter ’s discussion. These results will better contextualize the BAP excavations, and should provide the foundation for future studies to better interpret both intra-site mortuary variability in Cis-Baikal, as well as the nature of the dynamic cultural landscape articulating such sites. In this chapter, only those attributes that exhibit relatively substantial variation are discussed. Therefore, unless there are unusual specific cases, exact details are not provided on such generally uniform variables as paving or pit size. However, general information on such attributes for the site as a whole is provided when it is available. Given their demonstrated importance at KN XIV, particular attention is given to the spatial organization of each site and to the distribution of mortuary attributes across age and sex categories. Khuzhir-Nuge XIV As the largest and most extensively excavated cemetery in the Little Sea microregion, KN XIV provides the benchmark against which other Bronze Age sites will be compared in this chapter. It is therefore necessary to describe the structure of mortuary variability at the site in some detail. Additional details may be found in works by McKenzie (2006), Weber, Katzenberg, and Goriunova (2007), and Weber, Goriunova, and McKenzie (2008. KN XIV is located on a south-facing slope 15–30 m above Lake Baikal , in a shallow cove on the northwest coast of the Little Sea, and was excavated by members of the Baikal Archaeology Project between 1997 and 2001. The cemetery consists of 79 graves with 89 individuals and extends approximately 260 m from west to east between two roughly parallel bed- Variability in Bronze Age Mortuary Practices in the Little Sea Microregion 89 rock ridges—a smaller southern ridge and a much more prominent northern ridge—separated from each other...