Sungir

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Plan of the site

Sungir (Russian Сунгирь, scientific transcription Sungir '; English phonetic transcription Sunghir ) is an archaeological site on the northeastern outskirts of Vladimir (Russia) (190 km east-north-east of Moscow ). Sungir was best known for three particularly richly decorated graves, which date back to around 30,000 BC. In the Gravettia (early Upper Palaeolithic ).

location

The site is located on a hill at the mouth of the Sungir and the Kljasma and was buried under several meters of loess .

Excavations

Systematic excavations took place from 1957 to 1977 . In 1964 and 1969, O. Nikolai Bader, VI Gromov and VN Sukachev led the excavations, they discovered skeletons 1 and 2 as well as poorly preserved burials in the cultural layer.

One of the notable grave goods was a relatively massive thigh bone with severed joints, excavated by Otto Bader , which may have come from a Neanderthal man . The medullary cavity of this bone was filled with ocher powder . Among the remains of a total of eight Cro-Magnon people , three graves with grave goods that are unique for this period emerge:

Grave 1

Replica of tomb 1 in the Parque de la prehistoria in Teverga

Grave of a 30–45 year old man (Sungir 1), discovered in 1955. He was sprawled on his back with his head pointing northwest. The grave was strewn with ocher, especially around the head and shoulders. The gifts include ivory bracelets and approx. 3000 ivory pearls, which were probably sewn onto the clothing. He died of a neck injury.

Grave 2

Facial reconstruction of the boy from grave 2

Grave 2 contained the double burial of two young people. Sungir 2 is an 11-13 year old boy, Sungir 3 is a 9-11 year old girl. They were buried with very elaborate jewelry and lances made of mammoth ivory. Conclusions about the type of clothing could be drawn from the arrangement of the ivory beads. Both youths wore headgear at the burial.

Radiocarbon dating and assignment

The burials are calibrated between 32'050 and 28'550 BC, the dates of the animal remains between 32'030 and 29'178 BC. Since the pollen finds indicate a relatively warm phase, according to Trinkaus and colleagues (2015) only the interstadial GI-5 remains between the 305th and 301th centuries BC. BC GICC05 scale as the most likely time. The tombs of Sungir are among the northernmost fossil finds of the Cro-Magnon man during the last ice age.

literature

  • Nikolai Bader (ed.): Posdnepaleolititscheskoje posselenije Sungir. Nautschny Mir publishing house, Moscow; 272 pp.
  • Бадер О.Н., Бадер Н.О. Homo Sungirensis. Верхнепалеолитический человек: экологические и эволюционные аспекты исследования. Научный мир, 2000. (Russian, English)
  • Erik Trinkaus, Alexandra P. Buzhilova, Maria B. Mednikova, Maria V. Dobrovolskaya: The People of Sunghir. Burials, Bodies, and Behavior in the Earlier Upper Paleolithic. Oxford University Press, New York 2014, 420 pp. ISBN 9780199381050

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erik Trinkaus, Alexandra P. Buzhilova, Maria B. Mednikova, Maria V. Dobrovolskaya 2015, The Age of the Sunghir Upper Paleolithic Human Burials. Anthropos LIII / 1-2, 221
  2. ↑ Erik Trinkaus, Alexandra P. Buzhilova, Maria B. Mednikova, Maria V. Dobrovolskaya 2015, The Age of the Sunghir Upper Paleolithic Human Burials. Anthropos LIII / 1-2, 222
  3. ↑ Erik Trinkaus, Alexandra P. Buzhilova 2012, The death and burial of Sunghir 1. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 22, 655-666
  4. ↑ http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/research/strat_dating/annual_layer_count/gicc05_time_scale/

Web links

Commons : Sungir  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 56 ° 10 ′ 33 ″  N , 40 ° 30 ′ 33 ″  E