BRONZE NOSE RINGS FROM THE BURIAL OF THE EARLY BRONZE AGE IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS
In 2017, in a single tumulus of the Novosrednenskoye-1 burial ground, located near the village of the same name in the Kirovsky district of the Stavropol Region, a burial was examined. On the burial on an ancient horizon, an earthen mound was erected. The buried laid in a wooden box, on the cover of which were the skulls of two bulls with bronze nose rings. For a better understanding of the essence of the burial rite recorded in the Novosrednenskoye-1 mound, we mention a small series (13 locations) of burial complexes, discovered in burials in the North Caucasus, in which nose rings were found. The purpose of the rings is to control animals harnessed to a cart. According to the authors, a symbolic team of two bulls was used to transfer the soul of the deceased to the world of their ancestors. To further prove this point, the work briefly provides the evolution of the views of researchers (N.I. Veselovsky, R.M. Munchaev, V.A. Trifonov, S.N. Korneevsky, Yu.Yu. Piotrovsky, V.V. Emelyanov, A.R. Kantorovich, et al) on the functional purpose of bronze objects such as rods bent into loops (from the idea of “horse cheekpieces” to bull “nose rings”, as well as symbols of royal hereditary power among the Sumerians - “a rod and a ring threaded into it with a rope”). This article is the first to suggest a possible connection between the cult of bull “nose rings” and the fashion that emerged in the Novosibirsk era for the use of wire oval pendants, which were fixed not in the puncture of the nasal septum, but in the punctures of the earlobes of the deceased. Such pendants, made of bronze or silver wire, were popular in the Novotitarovskaya culture, which replaced the Novosvobodnenskaya culture. In such a way, apparently, a person was magically likened to a character in Avestan mythology - a man-bull or a shepherd-king Gopatshah (gōbedšāh).