At home in death – A mortuary approach to Afanas’evo household organization in Southern Siberia and the Altai mountains
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52967/3007-6528.2025.39.48Keywords:
Early Bronze Age, Afanas’evo, Burials, Spatial analysis, HouseholdsAbstract
Despite a firm grasp of the material typology of the Afanas’evo culture, the underlying social dynamics shaping its material record and its place within the grander diachronic developments in Southern Siberia and the Altai mountains are only now starting to be explored in depth. Spatial analysis of Afanas’evo cemeteries mapping typological factors of surface structures and biological characteristics of the interred individuals yields spatially and typologically distinct clusters featuring recurring age-based distribution patterns. These clusters may reflect corporate groups adhering to a broader “Afanas’evo paradigm” while utilizing structural idiosyncrasies and spatial management to distinguish their deceased from other non-members. Following this argumentation, intra-cluster distributions of burials provide a diachronic perspective of age-based social dynamics and interactions within Afanas’evo households.
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