Cremations at Aleksandrovskiye Skaly 1 in the context of cremation practice studies in the Bosporan kingdom in the Roman period

The paper describes the results of the studies relating to the cremations from the Aleksandrovskiye Skaly 1 cemetery. Three of 240 graves dating from the 1st-2nd centuries AD contained cremated remains in urns. One urn was placed in a pit that was specially dug (grave 31, section 1), the second urn was placed in an undercut grave (63.2, section 1), the third was represented by a sealed urn placed near the head of a young male buried in an in-ground pit with steps and a slab roofing (grave 46, section 2). The two urns contained cremated bones of two adult individuals. Most likely, the cremation from grave 46 should not be categorized as a paired grave because the second individual was an unborn child inside the mother at the cremation. Grave 46 is a sepulcher that belonged to one, rather young family where a woman died during childbirth or earlier. For some reasons she was cremated whereas her ashes were sealed in an urn. Presumably, it was kept in the family of her husband until he died. The cremation rite occurs at Bosporus necropolis in the Roman period in rare cases. Judging by the collected evidence, the individuals from the Aleksandrovskiye Skaly 1 cemetery whose bodies were cremated after their death could belong to the social strata of society that had the level of prosperity sufficient to perform such a costly funerary rite. The reasons why the relatives of the dead chose precisely this rite so far remain unclear.