Ritual Burials in the Mounds of the Zhetyasar Culture (The Role of Animals in the Funeral Rite of the First Half of the 1st Millennium A.D. in the Southern Aral Sea Region)

The article discusses animal burials in the mounds of the Zhetyasar culture in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya River. In three cases, these are dog burials. The position of the animal carcass was different in all three cases. Only in one burial mound a dog was buried with a human. Sacrificial cult complex is described separately: the burial of a ram with implements, an improvised altar of fire and a pit in the center, where repeated animal sacrifices were performed. Shared burials of humans and dogs or individual burials of animals have been known in Eurasia, from the Dnieper to the Sayano-Altai, since the Bronze Age. Burials of animals in the context of the ritual carried a different semantic meaning. Construction victims stand out as a separate category. Some burials can be interpreted as accompanying or protective sacrifices, and single burials of animals are substitute ones. Animal sacrifices performed after human burial are highlighted, sometimes made consecutively. The sacred ritual complex discovered in the territory of the kurgan necropolis of Kos 3 is unique and has no analogues in Central Asia. It is concluded that dogs occupied a certain place in the funeral rite of the Eastern Iranians. The ancient people viewed the dog as a special animal, a guardian of the home and a person accompanying it to the other world, originated long before the canonical postulates of Zoroastrianism about the dog as one of the favorite creations of Ahura Mazda.