The Lyutsin burial ground is an archaeological site near the city of Ludza (formerly Lyutsin), Latvia , which is an ancient cemetery of Latgals and Livs , remarkable for the richness of the remnants of the pagan era.
The first major excavations were carried out by E.R. Romanov and V.I. Sizov in 1890-1891, when 338 graves were uncovered. A lot of things mined here are stored in the Hermitage (in St. Petersburg), and its wealth has not yet been exhausted. In it was found, among other things, a box lined with birch bark and cloth-like material, with a number of metal objects (chain mail, neck hoops, rings, and the like). The burial ground contains both female (with many bronze ornaments - trapezoid pendants, bracelets with snake heads at the ends, plate and twisted hryvnias, chest chains, rings), as well as men's (spearheads, powerful brass knuckles, axes) burials.
In some graves only things were found, without bones, which probably indicates the existence of cases where the corpse was burned, and things and ashes were buried. There are much fewer rich graves in the cemetery than ordinary ones, which gave scientists the opportunity to suggest the existence of a significant social stratification among the peoples of this region of that time. According to the abundance of skulls that are closer to the skulls of Estonians and Livs, scientists suggest that the Lyutsin burial ground belongs to the long past (around the X century) Livs.
Links
- Lyutsin burial ground // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- Lyutsin burial ground - article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia .