Alakul’ burials in a cradle: archaeological and ethnographic parallels

Child burials in a cradle are a unique phenomenon in the Bronze Age ofthe Urals Siberian Region. They have been recorded in the Okunevo culture of SouthernSiberia and the Alakul’ culture. The paper is dedicated to searching parallels to the Alakul’burials in a cradle, which had walls curved inwards and sharp protruding corners. Theclosest parallels to the Alakul’ cradles have been identified in the Pit-grave culture that hasyielded burials in a real cradle and in clay models imitating cradles. The paper provides arather wide range of ethnographic parallels to the cradles of the Alakul’ type in the cultureof Western Siberia peoples and draws attention to their semantics.