Volsk-lbishche ceramics in the burial complexes: cultural markers or markers inside cultures?

The article is devoted to the burial complexes where ceramics were found with some features of Volsk-Lbishche culture. Analysis of the burial complexes reveals that such ceramics could not serve as marker that burial complexes belong to Volsk-Lbishche culture. Such ceramics had been found in the complexes of Volga-Don Babinskaya culture, Volga-Ural cultural group, the early Pokrovskaya culture, and in the group of the mysterious sitting burials in Volga-Ural region which were related to post-Сatacomb culture. These ceramics could be interpreted as a testimony of contacts between post-Сatacomb cultures and the neighboring groups of Volsk-Lbishche culture. The reveal of Volsk-Lbishche ceramics in the closed complexes of post-Сatacomb burials provides us with the basis to define the upper chronological limit of Volsk-Lbishche culture as the turn of the III-II millennium BC.