Golden Horde Burials with Silk Items: Problems of Interpretation

Introduction. The Golden Horde epoch in the East European steppe was marked, among other things, by the emergence of urban culture in the region. The urban centers and, first of all, the Golden Horde capital in the Lower Volga were the seats of the ruling elite, but also the centers of trade and crafts people coming from all over the places. Around the towns, there were cemeteries with hundreds of burials that were opened and examined by specialists. In the steppe, near the bank of the river, the Golden Horde epoch is represented by a limited number of burials scattered among a variety of kurgan groups. The article aims to examine Golden Horde burials which comprise silk items; these Volga-Manych sites have previously been part of the studies of steppe elite burials. Materials and methods. The grave goods of most sites in question comprised weaponry, ceramics, and animal bones, the traces of funeral feasts, while luxury items were few. Of much interest in this respect are a Volga-Manych series of Golden Horde burials that comprised silk items. According to numerous data of the written sources, silk was equaled to gold in the medieval time. The fact that the Volga-Manych nomads had clothes made of silk was not only the evidence of their high social status and wealth but also a mark that they were the subjects of the Mongolian Empire. Results. In the burials under study, the silk finds were exclusively the clothing and headdress items of the buried. The fabric originated from the eastern (China, Egypt) and western (Byzantium) production centers. Remains of silk products were found both in the burials of men and women. These were both latitudinal-oriented graves, in which the buried were laid with their heads to the west, and meridionally-oriented graves, with the person’s head to the north. According to the present authors, the latter type may be interpreted as a feature characteristic of ethnic Mongolians’ funeral practice, while the former type graves were those of the Polovtsy and other Turkic-speaking groups.

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