Funeral practice of Petrovka culture on the materials of the Novoilyiinsky burial ground

The article looks at the recent research dealing with the comparative analysis of funeral rites elements of the Petrovka culture. It is spoken in detail about the elements that contained in burial mounds № 4 and 5 of Novoyilinovsky II burial ground (Taranovskiy region, Kostanai province, Republic of Kazakhstan). Materials of funerary structures make it possible to attribute them as mounds of the Petrovka type. However, some ritual features have similarities with the Sintashta burial tradition close to the Petrovka cultural basis. The preservation of cultural stereotypes is confirmed by the similarity of ways of organizing kurgan space, altars, ways of burying the dead and ceramic material. The ceramic fragments for the most part are identified as pots of the Petrovka type; however, some of them belonged to six pots of the Sintashta appearance. Likely that the investigated mounds, due to their central location on the burial field, could be the core of the formation of the Novoilyinovsky II necropolis. This assumption is supported by the peripheral location of the Alakul burial mounds and the lack of a tradition of altars organization associated with the memory of the Sintashta cultural heritage. At the same time, the structure of the burial rite of the Alakul burial mounds is similar to the Petrovka funeral traditions. This fact makes it possible to assume the interrelation of cultural models in funeral rites of the population of the Ural-Kazakhstan steppes in the Bronze Age.