Postmortem neighborhood: Early Scythian secondary graves in the meta-structure of kurgan sites

The paper explores secondary graves in the Bronze Age kurgans which have been discovered in the South of East European steppes (7th-6th centuries BC). As constituent elements of the funerary site meta-structure, the Early Scythian complexes were systemized based on the number of graves in the kurgan group, their topography in the cemetery and in each specific kurgan, and location of such kurgans with the graves in question within the burial ground (group) area. The analysis of the materials shows that the Early Scythian graves can form groups made up of several graves located both in various kurgans of the cemetery and in one kurgan. The graves in one kurgan may be linked by both horizontal stratigraphy and vertical stratigraphy forming tiers. The analysis found that the meta-structure of the Early Scythian sites is practically similar to the meta-structure of the sites from the pre-Scythian period. Some social groups of the Early Scythian populations, probably, members of small families and, maybe, male warrior teams could arrange small local cemeteries that functioned for a short period of time.