The grave assemblage of the Hellenistic period from the kurgan cemetery near the village of Kuchugury

The paper introduces into scientific discourse an assemblage of funerary constructions discovered by archaeological excavations under one of the mounds of a kurgan group located 2.1 km from the coast of the Sea of Azov (1.2 km southeast of the village of Kuchugury) in 1984-1985. Indeterminate calcined bones that are few in number do not make it possible to interpret one of the finds (burial 1) as cremation in situ. The remainder three burials are secondary burial chambers with trapezoidal entry pits made in native clay. These burials form part of a single cultural and chronological assemblage of graves. The assemblage can be dated to the Hellenistic Period, i.e. the 3rd-2nd centuries BC. The examined materials, in particular, a set of palaestrite, the Charon's obol rite, an assemblage of cult terracotta statuettes reconstruct Hellenistic traditions typical for the vast Ancient Greek oecumene. Absence of grave desecration signs and weaponry is an evidence of Bosporan Greeks' stable life not shadowed by military concerns.