Anthropomorphic stele in burials Catacomb culture Ukraine

In a catacomb funeral rite the basic types of the statutory plastic arts are presented: idols (anthropomorphous stele with complicated images on a surface), anthropomorphous steles (working up slabs with head like projection) and steles – stones (sculptural forms of natural origin with insignificant tracks of processing or without it), menhirs are altars (vertical placed stones which are accompanied by other ritual actions), small curried steles. Correlation of types of the statutory plastic arts with basic parts of funeral complex (chamber, mine, burial mound embankment), conducted on materials of North black sea Region, allowed to reveal steady regularity of localization. So, small carefully polished up steles are fixed into chambers, next to bury. Idols and stylistically close to them anthropomorphous steles were placed on the surface of burial mound embankment. Menhirs are situated either on the bottom or in filling of mine. Steles – stones, rarer are anthropomorphous steles, are often met in a mine at an entrance of a chamber. The analysis of materials determine to examine stone anthropomorphous steles in mines as symbolic replacements of human oblations. Interpretation of steles located in mines, from positions of expiatory oblations (to protective magic), but not from the point of view of embodiment in them godheads explains, their anthropomorphous schematic, absence of ritual symbols and signs. Setting of steles is in the inverted kind (downward by a head), intentional damage, it is constrained, probably, not only with a loss by them sacral semantics, and with the change of semantic value.