Social and cultural identity and possible interpretations of the ancient material culture

The concept of identity is one of the most recent in cultural anthropology and archaeology. Iron Age societies of the temperate Eurasia were for the most part non-literate. One may presume that in such societies, memory plays greater role in preservation of tradition, and various social groups had non-verbal behaviours - combinations of clothing, body decoration, other norms and media. It also used to be that people of the Sargatskoye culture could create and express their identity. The brightest examples are represented by small numbers of intact burials (Sidorovka, Isakovka and Tutrino cemeteries) as well as by other less blatant collections. With the questioning of the concept of identity the article examines recent archaeological thoughts and evaluate some elements of non-verbal media that offer possibilities to study cultural, social and group identity derived from burial mounds data.