Burials with the bronze-casting equipment of the Andronovo (Fedorovo) culture of the Tartas-1 burial ground (Central Baraba)

The funeral rite of the Andronovo (Fedorovo) culture is rather stable and well-studied phenomenon. Generally, in the Andronovo (Fedo-rovo) culture funeral rite it is not typical for burial inventory to reflect professional identity of the deceased. However, a range of burials of the Tartas-1 burial grounds contain items related to bronze-casting. It brings them closer to the so-called "burials of foundry workers" common in the Seima-Turbino culture circle. The study of this phenomenon is far from being completed, and the number of burials of the Andronovo (Fedorovo) culture from the Tartas-1 burial ground is constantly increasing. Though, now fairly objective conclusions can be made based on the amount of the work done (327 burials studied). The main purpose of this article is to compile the most complete list of the burials of Andronovo (Fedorovo) culture containing bronze-casting equipment with the description of the context of the findings and the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships of placing them in a burial. There have been found four burials containing individual items of foundry equipment at the Andronovo (Fedorovo) part of the Tartas-1burial grounds by now. One of these items is the sash of a stone casting mold for making j ewelry. The obj ects casted in it have a wide range of anal ogies in the cultures of the Srubnaya-Andronovo world. A fragment of a clay mold for the casting of two awls rectangular in cross-section was found in the burial of a child. The form is one-piece, disposable; it was molded from one piece of clay and broken when extracting finished castings. There were found ceramic crucibles in two burials. One of them, a round-bottomed vessel with a small protrusion on the side, was decorated like a bird's head. Similar, but wooden vessels, made in the shape of figures of water birds are well known in the peat bogs of the Urals, belonging also to the Early Metal period. Artifacts that can be interpreted as bronze-casting equipment in the burials of the Andronovo (Fedorovo) culture have been found for the first time. The burials of this culture of the Tartas-1 burial grounds are distinguished by a certain peculiarity caused by close contact with the local Late Krotovo (Cherno-Ozerye) population. The stability of the burial rite directly depends on how stable the social environment is. The stress of the Andronovo (Fedorovo) society was the result of its adaptation to new natural and climatic conditions of the Baraba forest-steppe and facing with indigenous ethnic formations. It led to a certain changes in the burial rite, the loss of some of its inherent elements and the acquisition of new ones borrowed from the local population. It should also be noted that the appearance of features of professional affiliation in the burial practice of the Andronovo (Fedorovo) culture became possible only with the presence of such social groups.

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