Ethnocultural relations of the Lower-Vychegda Permians with the population of the Northern Dvina basin in the middle ages (based on the materials of the funeral rite of the Chezhtyyag burial ground)

Funeral rites are one of the most conservative elements of the traditional culture of ancient ethnic groups. One of the characteristic features of the Lower Vychegda variant of the Vym archaeological culture is the plank inter-grave structures - log cabins. At the Chezhtyyag burial ground, they make up 34,2% of all burials. Similar log cabins were found on the burial grounds of neighboring Baltic-Finnish tribes, that allows us to assume that, most likely, the Zavoloch Chud’ is part of the Lower Vychegda Komi. Data from related sciences indicate a Baltic-Finnish component in the ethnogenesis of the Komi-Zyryans, especially clearly traced in the contact areas of the Komi-Zyryans and Baltic Finns, in particular on the Lower Vychegda. Sites belonging to the Vanvizdino and Vym cultures of the Komi-Zyryans’ ancestors have been discovered in the Northern Dvina basin, inhabited, before the Slavic colonization, by the Baltic Finns, which is the evidence of the cross-lane residence of neighboring population groups, and intensive intraregional migrations.