Kurgans (barrows) of the southern Ladoga Lake region.

Subject / Relics
Subject / Ethnic culture/Ethnic communities/
Subject / Ethnic culture//
Kurgans (barrows, burial mounds) of the southern Ladoga Lake region (the late 9th - early 13th centuries) pertain to so-called the Lake Ladoga region Chuds whose descendants took part in forming Vepses and Karels. They were likely to be "kolbyagi", mixed Finnish and Scandinavian population, given military detachments for prince compaigns. Barrows were researched by D. Evropeus, N.E. Brandenburg, V.I. Ravdonikas, A.M. Linevsky, S.I. Kochkurkina, V.A. Nazarenko and others from the second half of the 19th century. More then 600 mounds were excavated in 140 burial grounds located on the banks of the Pasha, Syas, Tikhvinka, Oyat, Svir rivers and their tributaries. They differed from old Russian barrows. The heart of funeral ritual is the idea of the afterlife dwelling with a hearth in the centre. The dwelling is devided into male's (eastern) and female's (western) halves. Firstly the deceaseds were cremated, the ritual of corpse-layout appeared in the 11th century. A set of funeral kitchen utensils (a copper, pots, iron frying pans) and a spade for sweeping the coal were set on the hearth. Both simultaneous burials, when a woman was killed for escorting a man to the next world, and burials taking place at different times were found. Male burials were sometimes escorted by burials of horses and cut off human heads. Rich household equipment (arms, horse gear, work and hunting equipment, everyday life things, pots and pans, decorations) were put into burial mounds. Arms were gone bad. After ending the rirual the purifying fire was kindled in the ditch around the burial. The barrow ritual advent was triggered off by the Mound Culture influence and the the advert of the Scandinavians among the local Baltic and Finnish population. Scandinavians were middlemen in the exchange of the fur for arms and decorations. The centre of the new community was formed at the junction of the Pasha River and the Syazniga River (a fortified settlement at the Gorodishche Village). Connections with neighbouring Ladoga played the important role. In the 12th - the early 13th centuries single burials, where the deceased was put in the grave and oriented with the head to the West (it is typical for old Russian rural population), were spread in all places. Plotkin, Konstantin Moiseyevich
Brandenburg, Nikolay Yefimovich
Europeus, Daniel
Kochkurkina, Svetlana Ivanovna
Linevsky, Aleksandr Mikhaylovich
Nazarenko, Vladimir Aleksandrovich
Ravdonikas, Vladislav Iosifovich
Historical Toponyms/Ladoga
Topographical landmarks/Oyat River, the
Topographical landmarks/Pasha River, the
Topographical landmarks/Svir River, the
Topographical landmarks/Syas River, the
Topographical landmarks/Syazniga River, the
Topographical landmarks/Tikhvinka River, the
Кочкуркина С.И. Юго-Восточное Приладожье в X-XIII вв. Л., 1973
Мачинский Д.А. Колбяги «Русской правды» и приладожская курганная культура // Тихвинский сборник. Вып. 1: Археология Тихвинского края. Тихвин, 1989
Назаренко В.А. Приладожская чудь // Финны в Европе. Вып. 2. М., 1990., С.82-93
Chud, see Vod
Karelians
Veps