Metal Artifacts in the Volga-Ural Yamna Culture Burial Rituals as an Indicator of the Social Significance of the Buried Person

The paper focuses on the role of metal artifacts in the Volga-Ural Yamna culture burial ritual. In the course of study 394 burials from 281 kurgans we surveyed for the presence of metal artifacts; only 51 of them (13% from all studied burial sites) contained the metal objects. The statistical calculation reveals a certain relationship between the great labor input into the burial complexes and the presence of the metal artifacts in Volga-Ural Yamna culture burials. The prime examples of these burial sites are the graves of the leaders where among other grave goods a quite number of metal objects of different applications had been discovered. The presence of metal artifacts in Yamna culture burials is a clear indicator of the dead person’s high social status for Volga-Ural Yamna culture.