Statues and large earthenware pot from barrow mound near Kremenskaya village on Lower Don: on concluding stage of making of Polovtsian sculptures (II)

The monument is located on a low terrace above the flood plain on the right bank of the Don river and is a part of a group of barrows near the Kremenskaya village. Barrow 1 was mounded at the top of a natural 40 m- high hill being over 100 m in diameter. A complex, which consisted of two stone statues and a vessel (a large earthenware pot), was an intricate stratigraphic composition of artifacts, defined by the head of excavation V.P. Shilov as single burial 2. In fact, there were two separate pits for the Polovtsian statues and for the large earthenware pot - a vessel which can be most likely dated back to the Golden Horde time. At the same time, both the critical analysis of the stratigraphy of the monument and the similarities considered enabled the authors to assume ceremonial interrelation of the statues and the large earthenware pot. Therefore, there are grounds to believe that religious monuments of the Turkic-speaking nomads of Southeastern Europe, as well as some types of statues, continued to exist in the Golden Horde time.