How Storage Pits Were Used to Make Burial Constructions in the Cemetery of Levadki in the Central Crimea

The cemetery of Levadki located int eh vicinity of present-day Simferopol existed from the mid-/second half of the second century BC to the mid-third century AD and belonged to the Late Scythian and Sarmatian populations. The many-year-long researches uncovered 193 funeral structures. Moreover, 33 storage pits were discovered in different cemetery areas. The household complex with the said pits probably was a peripheral area of the nearby fortified settlement of Zmeinoe. There were two cases of the household pits used as burial structures. These graves resemble the earliest grave type documented in the cemetery in question, i. e. chambered graves (catacombs). The datable materials in possessions confirms this suggestion. One of the graves was cut by an undercut grave from the second half of the first or the first half of the second century AD. The discovered assemblages allow the one to clarify the succession of events related to the history of the area in question. Therefore, this paper introduces into the scholarship the materials discovered in the burials of the cemetery in question.