Previously, it was believed that they were buried with old or sick animals.
Most of the horses found at the Koban burial ground of Gaston Wata were young and healthy. It was previously thought that animals used in burial rituals were sick, old or injured. The study of the horse remains from the Gaston Wata burial ground is published in a recent issue of the journal “History, archeology and ethnography of the Caucasus”it is also retold by the site Lomonosov Moscow State University
The Koban historical and cultural community is a group of tribes that lived in the North Caucasus at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the early Iron Age, from about the 13th to the 4th century BC. The “Kobans” are best known for their skillful bronze products, as well as for mastering terraced farming. In addition, linguists believed that these tribes became the autochthonous (i.e. “local”) substrate that underlies some of the modern peoples of the Caucasus.
Horses made up only 4-10% of the “herd” of the “Kobans”, but they played an important role in the economy and culture. The latter can be judged at least by the clay figurines that were found on altars – horse figurines are second in number among them after images of cattle. Both horse equipment and horse bones are found in burials. The latter have been little studied, and special archaeozoological work is especially lacking.
Natalia Spasskaya, an employee of the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, studied the remains of animals from the Koban burial ground of Gaston Uota, which is located in the Digorskoye Gorge (North Ossetia-Alania). It was studied in 1987-1998 by an expedition of the State Historical Museum led by Alexander Moshinsky. At the necropolis, archaeologists discovered the remains of at least 25 horses. They were not only in burials, which were almost all collective, but also on two sacrificial sites. All objects with horse bones are dated to the middle of the 5th – first half of the 4th century AD.
Animals were placed in the grave both whole and in separate parts. In addition, there were also remains of “effigies” – when not a whole carcass was placed in the grave, on its foundation or on the sacrificial site, but only the skin, connected with the skull and limb bones. That is, horses were used both as escorts to the other world, and as an offering, and as farewell or memorial food.
Three quarters of the horses from the Gaston Wat burial ground were young (56% – up to 3.5 years old, 20% – up to 4.5 years old). The sex could be determined only in three cases, all of which were stallions. In this case, a 15-16 year old riding stallion stands out, apparently it was someone’s personal horse (there were working pathologies on its teeth).
In total, 9 or 10 horses out of about 25 found at the burial ground were used as riding horses. Judging by the pathologies on the teeth, they began to be used at 2.5-3 years. Bone measurements showed that Koban horses were mostly of medium height (withers height 136-144 cm). They turned out to be close to fast-paced (racing or trotting) breeds. The only complete skeleton of a stallion also most likely belongs to the racing type.
The last observation also does not coincide with earlier ideas. Based on clay and bronze figurines, researchers assumed that the Kobans had two breeds of horses: racing horses, thin-legged and graceful, and heavyweights, broad-boned, adapted to walking in mountainous terrain. But this discrepancy between ideas and observations still needs to be verified – so far the sample is not very large.
Source: www.nkj.ru
