This collection reflects but a small part
of the North-Caucasus Expedition results.
In their article "The North-Caucasus Ex-
pedition" A. N. Ghey and !. S. Kamenetsky
list the sites that had been studied by the
expedition in the ten years of its existence.
This information will, undoubtedly, provide a
key to the multitude of materials already
accumulated.
A. N. Ghey centres his article "The Burial
of a Founder of the Novotitorovo Culture
from the Lower Kuban Area" on burial
containing grave goods associated with me-
tallurgical production. The author dates it to
the end of the early stage of the Novotitoro-
vo culture, that Is, the 25th-24th centuries
B.C. and believes that the complex occupies
an intermediate position between the grave
goods of the Novosvobodny and catacomb
barrows. Experts will find it of interest that,
according to the author, metallurgy develo-
ped already among the immediate ancestors
of the bearers of the catacomb culture,
which he believes included the Novotitorovo
culture.
In her article "Bronze Age Burials in the
Western Foothills of the Caucasus (On
Research Methods)" I. A. Sorokina raises
the problem of the ways of classifying
log-chamber burials and their grave goods,
in the Western foothills of the Caucasus.
The codes employed by the author in
describing burial rites and pottery allow for
the computer processing of the material (the
amount of the known burials of the log-
chamber historical and cultural community
has of late grown to such an extent that it is
no longer possible to study them by traditi-
onal methods). The final conclusion of the
researcher is that the log-chamber burial rite
was uniform in the Western foothills of the
Caucasus and only the rarely encountered
characteristics of the rite and pottery can
serve as a basis for classification into
periods and dating.
Ye. I. Savchenko publishes in "The
Krymsky Burial Ground" the materials of
the years-long work of the Crimean team of
the Donskaya expedition in studying the
8th-10th century pit burial ground outside
the village of Krymsky, the Rostov region. Si-
milar burial grounds are traditionally asso-
ciated with the Bulgarian ethnic groups,
which formed part of the Khazar ethno-
political community in the 8th-10th centuri-
es. The materials yielded by the burial
ground make it possible to add to the ethnic
map of the territory of the Khazar khaganate
and to undertake an indepth study of the
ethnic culture of the Bulgarian population
covered by the blanket term "the Saltovo-
Mayatskaya archaeological culture".
M. A. Romanovskaya's article "Storozhe-
voi Kurgan" focusses on the burials and
materials found in a burial mound (kurgan)
outside Novocherkassk reflecting nearly all
the stages of the history of the Right Bank
Don, including pit and catacomb culture,
post-catacomb and Sarmatian burials. Ex-
perts are sure to find these complexes of
interest.
In her article "Excavations of the Shaha-
yevskaya I Kurgan Group in 1972" E. A. Fe-
dorova-Davydova analyses the burial rite and
materials of 37 burials found in sixexcavated
burial mounds representing the main cultu-
ral and chronological stages, namely, the
catacomb and log-chamber culture. Four
burials have been singled out into a special
group which, though associated by experts
with the log-chamber culture, nevertheless
bears the imprint of the catacomb culture.
The collection also includes I. S. Kame-
netsky's paper "A Code to Describe the
Burial Rite" dealing with the important and
complicated problem of unifying the met-
hods of describing the burial rite and
corresponding terminology. The code given
by the author in the table form can be used
in describing burials within the region of the
North Caucasus of any period and is indis-
pensable in computer processing. The aut-
hor touches upon some concommitant prob-
lems, such as the history of the evolution of
the code, its testing in field work and the
working out of a data retrieval system on its
basis.
G. P. Romanova attempted in her article
"Comparative Demographical Analysis of the
Paleoanthropological Material from the Le-
bedi III Burial Ground" to compare from the
demographical point of view the paleo-
anthropological series from the 4th century
B.C. burial ground with the series of skele-
tons from the 17th-18th century Lebedi I
burial ground. The people who left those
burial grounds behind lived in similar ecolo-
gical conditions and, in the author's opini-
on, had a similar economic mode of life.
Comparison of the two revealed differences
in the intensity and regime of their mortality.
M. M. Gerasimova considered the materi-
al from the early medieval burial ground of
Moshchevaya Balka, which was studied by
the North Caucasus Expedition on the Bol-
shaya Laba in the Stavropol region. The
overall comparison of the craneological seri-
es from Moshchevaya Balka with the Alan
series demonstrated their considerable simi-
larity. This introduces corrections into the
earlier concept of the anthropological type
of the people who left the burial ground
behind and the role they played in the
evolution of the anthropological type of the
Adygs.
G. Ye. Afanasyev
5