EXTRAORDINARY BURIALS FROM LORI BERD MONUMENT: INTERPRETATION OPPORTUNITIES

Author(s):  А.Yu. Khudaverdyan, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia, akhudaverdyan@mail.ru

S.G. Devedjyan, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia

Vartanyan, Dr., Yerevan State Medical University, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia

А.А. Yengibaryan, Dr., Yerevan State Medical University, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia

Issue:  Volume 45, №1

Rubric:  Topical issues of world history

Annotation:  Extraordinary burials reflect poorly studied in Armenian archeology specific forms of treatment of the deceased body and its bone remains. It is analyzed several methods of treating buried remains of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age from Lori Berd monument, such as: body dissection, exhibiting, crema-tion, burial of only the right half of a cranium and fragments of postcranial skeleton. The conducted re-search allows to solve wide range of expert issues associated with intravital disorders and postmortem, as well as identification of types of guns. Lori Berd for the first time clearly records polyvariant manipu-lations with the bodies of the deceased on the territory of Armenia. In its burials the skeletal remains are fixed in a dismembered, exposed, cremated, anatomically inconsistent order and are represented by a notoriously incomplete set of bones. Author comes to the conclusion that specific types of burials reflect poorly studied in Armenian archeology specific forms of treatment of the deceased's body and its bone remains.

Keywords:  Armenia, Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, body dissection, exhibiting, cremation.

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