Funeral sites of the beginning of the Late Bronze age in the estuarine Trans-Kama river area

The paper offers results of 2014 field research of the first stage of the late Bronze Age burial grounds in the Volga-Kama region –Novo-Mordovo II and Stary Kuybyshev VI. These burial grounds are located in the area of the abrasion escarpment of Kuybyshev dam lake, in the confluence of the Volga and the Kama rivers. The first burial ground was discovered by A.H. Khalikov in 1962, the second is a recent discovery. The authors believe that the funeral rite and the inventory of these sites are very similar. All inhumations were made in shallow sub-quadrangular pits, in a crouched position on the left side. The funeral rite and the inventory combine elements of the Pokrovskiy and the Potapovskiy cultural types, which makes the authors to suggest the origins of formation of the Zaymishche type sites here. Analogies revealed in the sites of the Pokrovskiy and Potapovskiy types date existence of Novo-Mordovo II and Stary Kuybyshev VI burial grounds to the period preceding the Srubnaya cultural-historical community, and overall can fit within 19th – 18th centuries BC