Некоторые вопросы к изучению культуры плиточных могил

During the Scythian period, the eastern regions of the Eurasian steppe were inhabited by nomadic populations who created the Slab Grave culture. This article raises a number of questions associated with historical and cultural study of this ethnic and political entity of preliterate history. The core issue is the content of the Slab Grave culture which markedly differed from other cultures of Eurasia of the Scythian period. The study confirmed the symbiosis between the "Karasuk” and "Scythian” traditions in the material and spiritual culture of the Mongolian and Transbaikalpopulations during the 8th/7th to 4th centuries BC, which was first suggested in the final third of the 20th century. This suggestion proceeded from the hypothesis about the predominance of the Lugavka (in the 20th-century historiography, currently "Karasuk”) bronze-casting tradition, which was based on the documented sources from burials, large number of accidentalfinds in the area of that culture, and representations on deer stones of the Mongolian-Transbaikal type. Studying the imagery on deer stones, including its technological aspects, is crucial for discussing chronology of the sites ofthat type. In this context, a question of considerable importance is whether the deer representations may be actually interpreted as manifestations of material culture. The discord between the "Scythian background” of the Slab Grave culture and its closest neighbors - the inhabitants of the high-altitude steppes of the Western Sayan and Altai Mountains - triggered the return to the "third world” concept, proposed by D.G. Savinov for the Bronze Age of the Eurasian steppes. The distinctiveness of the "third world” (Mongolia and Transbaikalia) was not only in preservation of Bronze Age traditions in an adaptedform but also in a series ofhistorical circumstances which still remain unclear.