The bear bone in grave 50 from the Shchurovo cemetery and its cultural and historical context

The paper describes results of the osteological study of cremation grave No. 50 from the Shchurovo cemetery. The site is located on the right bank of the Okariver (near Kolomna in the Moscow region). Besides remains of an adult individual, it was possible to identify bones of a medium-size animal, a large animal and a claw phalanx of a bear. Along with a similar find in the Kremenye cemetery on the Oka river, it is the second case when parts of a bear carcass (a hide?) were discovered in the center of European Russia. These finds suggest that in the Moscow region there existed a tradition similar to that in the Baltics and Fennoscandia.