Vault 384 with niches from the necropolis on the south-eastern slope of the Eski-Kerman plateau

In 2015, on the lower terrace of the southern slope of the Eski-Kermen plateau, in the early part of the necropolis, vault 384 was opened with a chamber in the walls of which niches were cut out for children’s burials. The vault was used in the last decades of the 6th – first half of the 7th century. Four people were buried in it – two adults and two children, most likely representatives of the same family. On the walls and roof of the chamber there are numerous traces of a tool, possibly a pick, with which the gravediggers carved out a crypt in the thick marl. Traces of markings applied to the wall to mark the centre of the crypt have also been preserved. Niches for the burial of children, carved into the walls of the chamber, were recorded for the first time in a burial structure that belonged to representatives of the Gothic-Alan population of the South-Western Crimea in the early Middle Ages.