ANIMALS IN A BURIAL RITE OF THE POPULATION OF THE LOWER KAMA REGION IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 1<sup>ST</sup> MILLENNIUM AD (BASED ON MATERIALS FROM GULYUKOVO BURIAL GROUND)
The paper featured the results of a study of animal remains from the graves of the Late Sarmatian period at Gulyukovo burial ground on the Ik river (Tatarstan) in the context of the burial traditions of the population of the Lower Kama basin in the 1st - 4th centuries AD. A stable anatomical composition of the complexes of animal bones placed in the graves as funeral food was revealed. The taxonomic composition is less monolithic, and large cattle bones are predominant. A comparison with the Pyany Bor, Mazunino, Kara-Abyz and Azelino burial grounds revealed a radical difference between the anatomical and taxonomic composition of the compared osteological complexes. In this regard, the authors made a conclusion on the various meaning of animal remains in the burial rites of Gulyukovo burial ground and cemeteries of the aforesaid cultures. The use of a wider range of counterparts has revealed a similarity in the anatomical composition and function of the bone sets from Gulyukovo complexes with the animal remains discovered in the late Sarmatian burials of the Volga-Don interfluve and in the burials of the Dzhetyasar culture on the Lower Syr Darya. The authors are convinced that an unambiguous determination of the origins of the tradition in question and tracing of its distribution in synchronous (Akhmerovo II, Salikhovo) and development in the later (Dezhnevo, Kushnarenkovo, Birsk) burial grounds of the region is impossible due to the current state of the source base.