The paper is devoted to the burial artefacts and funeral ritual of ancient Slavs in the basin of the Tysa and Danube. This was a whole set of actions related to the tribute to ancestors and care of them in the afterlife. It included a traditional ritual from the biological death of a decedent till its burial in a tomb as well as ritual acts performed afterwards in memoriam of the decedent.
As follows from archeological sources, by the middle of the first millennium A.D. Slavs had formed a traditional burial ritual with the body being burned. This ritual underwent considerable changes due to the Slav expansion to the Balkans and Central Europe. Due to the cultural basis of the newly inhabited territories and the burial ritual of the local population, the traditional Slavic ritual was losing old details and acquiring new ones, resulting in a transition from cremation to inhumation.
Traditional body-burning burial rite can be barrowless (ground-based) or barrow-type. Barrowless burials with body burning in the Tysa-Danube basin are studied rather narrowly, with only a minimal amount of them being known. Their characteristic feature was that after the cremation the relics in the form of calcinated bones were left in shallow pits or in clay urns without any external sings.
Depending on the place of the cremation relics being left, the barrowless cremation burials are divided into urn-type and urnless (pit-type). The first were characterised by the post-cremation relics being placed in clay urns or in their bottom parts. Urnless burials were ended up by placement of the post-cremation relics in small pits with the depth of 0,25 to 0,6 m.
Another large group of burial artefacts is represented by barrow-type burial mounds with body burning. They were different in size, occupying on the average the area from 1 to 5 ha where from 20 to 90 barrows could be located. Depending on the place and way of the post-cremation relics being placed under the mound, the following variations are distinguished: urn-type, pit-type, long horizon-type, and wooden coffin-type.
The majority of the known burial artefacts in the Tysa-Danube basin belong to the inhumation type. Depending on the character of the burial structure, the inhumation rite burial grounds are divided into barrow-type and ground-type (hole-type). Burials of the first type were characterised by placing the decedent’s body in an outstretched position on the back under a ground mound.
The second large group of necropoles are ground-type, ending up in the decedent’s body being placed in holes that had been dug in the ground. In most cases they are of rectangular shape with sizes ranging from 1,7 to 2,1 m (length) and 0,6 to 1,1 m (width).
Кеy words: ancient Slavs, burial artefacts, funeral ritual, Tysa-Danube basin.
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