Late Antique Bone Combs from the Territory of the Lower Don Region

Late antique three-layer bone combs are one of the most distinctive symbols of the Chernyakhov culture antiquities. This article presents a collection of bone combs and their fragments from the Lower Don territory, located outside the main distribution area of the Chernyakhov culture. This study examines a selection of 18 bone combs and their fragments. The terminology and typology by R.G. Shishkin are used in the description of the combs. The combs can be divided into two groups: those found in the Late Antique Tanais layer and those found in burials. The finds of combs in the kurgan cemeteries of the steppe zone are associated with complexes in T-shaped catacombs of late Roman times in the Lower Don region dating from the second half of the 3rd to the early 5th centuries AD. In late antique Tanais, the combs found in the layers of settlement and its necropolis date back to the mid-4th – mid-5th centuries. Thus, the two groups of bone combs – from the steppe (8 items) and Tanais (10 items) – follow one another chronologically. In the burial complexes from the Lower Don region, the combs are divided almost equally by the gender of the deceased. Female individuals were buried in four of the ten burials, males in three, and two remained undetermined. The appearance of crests among nomads is the result of contacts between the bearers of the tradition of burials in T-shaped catacombs and the population of the Chernyakhov culture. The appearance of combs in the Tanais could be influenced not only by contacts but also by the migration of bearers of the Chernyakhov tradition to Tanais in the 4th century. Three-layer bone combs are important evidence of stable contacts between the population of the Lower Don region and their western neighbors for at least a century and a half, and they reflect the dynamics of the evolution of these artifacts.