The Berezhnov-Mayev log-house culture (XVII XII centuries BC) is widespread in the steppe and forest-steppe zone from Ingulets to the Volga. The eponymous monuments are the Berezhnovsky burial mound in the Volga region and the Mayevsky burial ground near the city of Dnepropetrovsk. In the 70s of the XX century N.K. Kachalova was allocated Berezhnovsky type of monuments, and I.F. Kovaleva Mayevsky. The general features of the funeral rite allowed V.V. Otroshchenko to combine both types into a separate Berezhnov-Mayev culture as part of the felling cultural-historical community. Yu. M. Brovender singles out the Stepan type of monuments among her. It was formed on the basis of the Babin and Pokrovskaya log cabin crops. Monuments are represented by settlements, mounds and soil burial grounds, mines, workshops, treasures and random finds. The settlements were located in close proximity to the rivers on small elevations. The dwellings are represented by dugouts, half dugouts and ground buildings with stone foundations of walls. For heating homes used foci. Funeral monuments are represented by barrows and soil burial grounds. Mound necropolises are located mainly on terraces or elevations along river banks, less often on watersheds. A small number of embankments are included, usually with several fillings. The construction of long barrows was practiced. The deceased were buried mainly in sub-rectangular pits, sometimes stone crates, in log cabins in a crouched position on the left side, head to the east. Cremation is also known. Soil cemeteries of the Berezhnovo-Mayev culture are located mainly on the edges of the indigenous coasts, the first floodplain terraces and on small natural elevations in the floodplain in the immediate vicinity of the rivers and their synchronous settlements. Burials are represented by inhumations and cremations. Burials according to the rite of inhumation took place in sub-rectangular pits and stone boxes. Burials in log cabins on the territory of soil burial grounds were not recorded. The deceased were in a crouched position on their left side, head to the east. Cremations are represented by burials in urn vessels and in small soil pits. Vessels act as funerary equipment, metal products are less common.
Ceramics is represented by cans, pot-like and jagged vessels with geometric patterns in the form of horizontal and inclined lines, flutes, zigzags, Christmas trees and other geometric shapes.Sometimes on vessels, mainly in their upper part, string ornament and various signs in the form of crosses, solar signs, rectangles, schematic anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images are found. Already at a later time, a swastika and meander pattern begins to be depicted. A number of researchers see them as primitive pictographic writing. The content of these signs has not yet been deciphered. In burials there is also wooden cult ware, sometimes with bronze shackles. Tools and weapons made of stone are represented by a variety of axes and maces, scrapers, hammers, knives, anvils, ore graters and abrasives. Bone products are widespread: psalms, awls, veneers, punctures, needles, knitting needles, arrowheads. Metal tools are represented by axes, sickles, telescopes and chisels, punctures, needles, cuttings knives with highlighted crosshairs and daggers with an annular emphasis.
Metal jewelry is also widespread: rings, temporal lobed rings, wire pendants, spiral bracelets, and open bracelets with a double volute. Voluta, appears in the form of hairpins and images. The basis of the economy was stall and cattle breeding, which complemented agriculture. Ethnically, the carriers of the Berezhnovo-Mayev culture represent the Iranian-speaking group of the Indo-European language family. Recently, a scientific discussion has been actively conducted regarding the upper chronological limit of the felling cultural-historical community.. Berestnev S. I. in his work Felling culture of the Forest-Steppe Left Bank of Ukraine extends its existence until the 9th 8th centuries BC, that is, the Cimmerian Scythian culture replaces the felling culture.
Decontamination of the dead
Gubin A.S. in his article, Non-ordinary burials of the Burial Culture of the Ural-Volga Region, writes that according to the excavations in the Ural-Volga region, and by studying the materials of excavations of the burial sites of the log-timber culture, it was possible to establish that 7 out of 30 cases were found with signs of neutralization (23, 3%). The term neutralization by Gubin means the deliberate mutilation of a corpse: cutting off the head, limbs, and other parts of the body. A burial with an absent skull was recorded at the Kachkin burial ground (burial mound No. 15 burial No. 1); here, in the burial No. 1 of burial mound No. 20, the skull was present, but was located 50 cm to the north of the shelf [5: 13]. In the solitary burial of the mound No. 37 of the Staro-Yabalaklinsky burial ground there were no arm bones, and in the teenage burial No. 1 of the mound No. 104, the skeleton, feet, and skull were absent from the bone [6: 47]. Gubin notes that the inventory was present in all burials with signs of neutralization.
Culture
The type of economy of the carriers of the log-house cultural-historical community was mainly based on stall and distant cattle breeding, which partially supplemented the agriculture among the population of the Berezhnovo-Mayev log-house culture. In the Dnieper-Donetsk interfluve, isolated grains of cultivated cereals were discovered, which indicates the presence of floodplain agriculture in the economy of the Srubny tribes. In the Ciscaucasia and Caspian steppes and semi-deserts, semi-nomadic pastoralism may have been practiced. Nevertheless, the basis of the economy of the settled log-house population of the Late Bronze Age was stall and distant cattle breeding. Cattle breeding was a priority; horses accounted for a smaller percentage in the herd. Mining and metallurgical production, which was based on the copper sandstones of the Urals (Kargalinskoye deposit) and the Donetsk Ridge (Bakhmutskoye deposit), played an important role in the economy of the demographic cultural and historical community, and ore occurrences of the Middle Volga region were also used. The basic production of metal products was mainly located in several towns of foundry metallurgists Usovo Lake (Podonechie), Mosolovka (Podonye), Lipovy Gully (Middle Volga), Gorny 1 (Cisurals).
The tools necessary for metalworking are represented by axes, hammers, hammers, ore graters, flat and grooved chisels and chisels, cut-type knives and daggers. In the late Srubnaya time, logging blacksmiths master the secret of obtaining critical iron, from which the first few products, mainly small in size and weak in manufacturing quality, are forged. There are jewelry made of gold.
The lack of written sources significantly complicates the solution of the issue of ethnicity of the tribes of the Srubnaya cultural and historical community of the Late Bronze Age. Thus, the main method for determining ethnicity is to establish a relationship between the range of the tribes of the Srubnaya community and the spread of Indo-Iranian hydronyms and toponyms. Their pre-Scythian origin was convincingly proved by the linguist V.I. Abaev. Later, N. L. Chlenova traced the Iranian hydronyms in the steppe and forest-steppe zone from the Dnieper to the Ob, which completely coincided with the distribution area of the Srub and Andronovo cultural and historical communities and proved their belonging to the Iranian-speaking group of the Indo-European language family.
According to V.V. Napolsky, borrowings in the Finno-Ugric languages indicate that native speakers of the steppe cultures of the Bronze Age spoke the language of the Indo-Aryan type.Such attribution, as evidenced by the phonetics of borrowing, has traditionally been rejected for historical reasons. East Iranian speech spread only in the steppe with the culture of roll ceramics at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Carriers of the carcass culture chronologically preceded the Scythians and Cimmerians. For this reason, the carcass culture is often regarded as an archaeological analogue of the first Iranian dialects of the Northern Black Sea region. In other words, culture bearers are predecessors of the Scythians and their kindred peoples. However, there is another point of view: the area of the Srubnaya culture is the bridgehead from which the migration of ancient Iranians to the north-west of modern Iran took place. According to this point of view, semi-nomadic cattle-breeding tribes of the Srubnaya and Andronovo cultural and historical communities represent the Iranian group of the Indo-European language family at an early stage of its development.The early and middle phases of the late Bronze Age era in Eastern Europe coincide with favorable climatic conditions mostly wet and warm weather. There is a sharp rise in the producing forms of farming. Accordingly, in the XVIII XIII centuries BC, there was a maximum population density in all regions of the East European steppe and forest-steppe. A log-cultural and historical community is born, which was destined to complete the tradition of the formation of great ethnocultural associations in Eastern Europe in the Bronze Age. The demographic explosion in the environment of the logging community, the peak of which occurs in the forest-steppe in the XVI XV centuries BC, and in the steppe in the XIV XIII centuries BC, led to the depletion of natural resources and the collapse of the log-cultural and historical community.