Scientists from Samara University, Institute of Archaeology of Russian Academy of Sciences (IA RAS) and the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan for the first time discovered in the Nizhny Novgorod Region a burial with Western Finns’ traces of presence in the Volga region in the 1^st century AD. According to the researchers, the site can be attributed to the Piseraly-Andreevka group.not only because of the found items of material culture, but also traces of the burial of soldiers with slain enemies’ upper jaws.

In 2023, in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, the group of scientists from Samara University, the IA RAS and the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan discovered a unique archaeological site with graves dated by three periods: the 5^th–4^th centuries BC, the 1^st century AD, the 2^nd–3^rd centuries AD. According to the experts, military and household items found in the burial ground allow judging which culture carriers inhabited the surrounding territories in various eras.

Oleg Radyush, a researcher at the Department of Archaeology of the Age of the Great Migration of Peoples and the Early Middle Ages of the IA RAS, noted that the horizon dated by experts the 1^st century AD contained the most significant finds. It belongs to sites of the Piseraly-Andreevka group, similar to famous Andreevka burial mound in the Republic of Mordovia. In the territory of the Volga region, there are only a few such monuments, which make it possible to establish the time and geography of migrations of various ethnic groups at the turn of the ages.

Experts from Samara University told us that at the turn of the ages, the Sursko-Sviyazhsky interfluve, where the finds were made, was an intermediate territory between different ethnocultural groups: western and eastern Finns. The study of this area is aimed at establishing the time of Western Finns’ appearance in the Volga region, which happened to be ancestors of the Mari, Mokshas and Erzyas.

“We found in our Pilninsky burial ground items of military equipment, identical in appearance to those found in Andreevka burial mound. Chain-mail coats, spearheads, helmets, swords and arrows definitely make it possible to connect these two archaeological sites”, noted Radyush.
However, if items of material culture could be brought in the territory of the Sursko-Sviyazhsky interfluve by trade, funeral practices more accurately describe the ethnocultural composition of the population, said Sergey Zubov, a leading researcher at the Research Laboratory of Archaeology at Samara University.

In the the 1^st century AD horizon, researchers discovered burials with upper jaws as trophies, this practice was widely used in burials in Andreevka burial mound, dated the 1^st–2^nd centuries AD, where several cut-down human upper jaws were strung through specially made holes on the bridle reins.

“In terms of the hypothesis of using human body parts as a kind of military trophy, we can talk about enemies’ heads, and jaw fragments of skulls, most likely, acted “pars pro toto”, that is, as a part instead of a whole”, said Zubov.

The researcher explained that in the life of mankind for many millennia, decapitation was an integral attribute in the sacred and military spheres of different societies. The population of the Volga-Ural region is no exception here. Rather, on the contrary, in the Early Iron Age, this tradition reached its peak in the region, as evidenced by archeological excavation materials of several necropolises of that time.

Production of “war trophies” from human body parts, decapitation of enemies, human victims in funeral rites at the funeral of noble warriors makes it possible to study another side of the military subculture within the framework of the common traditions of the ancient population’s beliefs, Zubov stressed.

According to experts, historians adhere to the hypothesis that separation of Western Finns into a distinct group occurred as the result of their migration from the east, but they cannot determine exactly when this migration took place. They explained that it is the archaeological excavations of little-studied monuments of the Sursko-Sviyazhsky interfluve that can shed light on the ethnogenesis of contemporary peoples living in the territory of the modern Volga region and the Near-Urals.

Source: ria.ru