EVOLUTION OF FUNERAL TRADITIONS IN VOLNA 1 AND ARTYUSHCHENKO 2 NECROPOLISES DURING THE 6th to 4th CENTURIES BC
He article deals with the preliminary results of the study of chronological changes in the necropolises of Volna 1 and Artyushchenko 2 in the 6th to 4th centuries BC. A study of funerary monuments is carried out both by traditional archaeological and statistical- combinatorial data processing methods. As a result, it was possible to conduct a comparative analysis of the materials of 456 burials of Volna 129 and 130 burials of Artyushchenko 230.To create a database the authors used an universal code, which includes several common information blocks: the burial construction; the information about the skeleton; the sacrificial food, the funeral equipment, i.e. vessels; weapons, harness and equestrian equipment; details of the burial costume; tools; attributes of the cult, allows us to fully provide the information about the graves redesigned and supplemented for the study of the necropolis of the Asian BosporusIn the work there was applied a new technique with using of out-of-order attributes and interpreters for the analysis of the materials of the burial monuments: the territorial and chronological localization of the object, as well as the age and sex characteristics. Attributes interpreters were introduced in order to avoid the intuitive interpretation of the results of multivariate analysis. Multivariate analysis allows to identify the relationship of certain details of the rite with a specific interpreter and determine the combination of signs associated with a narrow or broad dating of graves, with the sex or age of the deceased, with belonging to one or another family-clan group.The study used the methods of factor -and cluster-analysis. The use of the new technique allowed us to clarify specific features of the rite, reflecting chronological changes in the funeral traditions. It was established, that the development of funeral traditions in these necropolises was not a linear process: at various stages of their operation, some funeral rites coexisted.