NEW EARLY MEDIEVAL BURIALS FROM THE TERRITORY OF THE WESTERN CISCAUCASIA

The article publishes materials from 10 inhumation burials investigated in 2015 during the rescue excavations of the Varnavinskoe-3 settlement (Abinsky district of Krasnodar Region). The presence of dating finds makes it possible to divide the entire massif of burials into several relative chronological groups: the middle of the 5th - the first half of the 6th century; the second half of 6th - the turn of the 7th - 8th centuries; 8th - 9th centuries (with only one burial related to the last group). The cultural specificity of the burials of the Varnavinskoe-3 settlement is determined by the predominance of the orientation of the buried with their heads in the northern direction. Direct analogies to this component of the burial rite in the complexes of the 5th - 7th centuries on the territory of the Western Ciscaucasia are few.