That group consisted of herders from the Asian steppes, whose skeletons and genes are known from their burial mounds called kurgans.
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With its undulating plains, ice-preserved kurgans (burial sites) and rare wildlife, the region, known as Shaman's Valley, is a photographer's dream.
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Philip L. Kohl.The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia. pp. 74, 82. Late Kura-Araxes sites often featured Kurgans of greatly varying sizes, with larger, wealthier kurgans surrounded by smaller kurgans containing less wealth.
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The roots of the Leylatepe > Archaeological Culture to which the Soyugbulaq kurgans belong to, stemmed > from the Ubaid culture of Central Asia. The Leylatepe Culture tribes > migrated to the north in the mid-fourth millennium, B.C. and played an > important part in the rise of the Maikop Culture of the North Caucasus. A > number of Maikop Culture kurgans and Soyugbulaq kurgans display the same > northwest to southeast grave alignment. More than that, Soyugbulaq kurgans > yielded pottery forms identical to those recovered from the Maikop kurgans.
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Some if these are characterized by great wealth, and probably belonged royals of aristocrats. They contain not only the deceased, but also horses and even chariots. The burial rituals carried out in these kurgans correspond closely with those described by Herodotus. The greatest kurgans from the Early Scythian culture in the North Caucasus are found at Kelermesskaya, Novozavedennoe II (Ulsky Kurgans) and Kostromskaya.
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2007 Also, at Soyuqbulaq, Agstafa, there are similar kurgans. Also, the earliest level at the multi-period site of Berikldeebi in Kvemo Kartli is relevant.Glonti and Dzavakhishvili 1987 These discoveries reveal the presence of early 4th millennium kurgans in the southern Caucasus.Origin of Early Transcaucasian Culture.
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The Potapovka culture is primarily known from at least eleven kurgans that have been found. These contain around eighty burials. Potpovka kurgans measure around 24 to 30 m in diameter and stand up to half-a-meter in height. They typically contain chambers surrounded by small peripheral graves of large central burial chambers.
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90–92 In the Iron Age culture of Tuva, some but not all kurgans were surrounded by a rectangular or round stone wall. The kurgans themselves were partially built of earth and partially of stone, with regional variation.Roman Kenk: Grabfunde der Skythenzeit aus Tuva, Süd-Sibirien. Materialien zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Archäologie, Band 24.
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The culture was predominantly nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers and a few hillforts. Characteristic for the culture are the burials in pit graves under kurgans (tumuli). The dead bodies were placed in a supine position with bent knees and covered in ochre. Multiple graves have been found in these kurgans, often as later insertions.
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Rich kurgans in the North Caucasus have been found at the Seven Brothers Hillfort, Elizavetovka and Ulyap, but although they contain elements of Scythian culture, these probably belonged to an unrelated local population. Rich kurgans of the forest steppe zone from the 5th and 4th centuries BC have been discovered at places such as Ryzhanovka, but these are not as grand as the kurgans of the steppe further south. Funerary sites with Scythian characteristics have also been discovered in several Greek cities. These include several unusually rich burials such as Kul-Oba (near Panticapaeum in the Crimea) and the necropolis of Nymphaion.
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The Western Baltic Kurgans culture existed in Masuria, Warmia, Sambia and northern Masovia during the 650–50 BC period. It originated partially from the people who migrated there from the Dnieper River area and assimilated elements of the Warmian-Masurian Lusatian branches (themselves preceded by the middle Bronze Age Sambian Kurgans culture), as well as of the old forest zone cultures. They were related in a number of ways, including funeral vessels, to their contemporary, the Pomeranian culture. Upon radial stone structures they built burial mounds – kurgans, or barrows, some of them quite large and containing a number of individual burials.
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A buried king was usually accompanied with multiple people from his entourage. Burials containing both males and females are quite common both in elite burials and in the burials of the common people. The most important Scythian kurgans of the Classical Scythian culture in the 6th and 5th centuries BC are Ostraya Tomakovskaya Mogila, Zavadskaya Mogila 1, Novogrigor’evka 5, Baby and Raskopana Mogila in the Dnieper Rapids, and the Zolotoi and Kulakovskiĭ kurgans in the Crimea. The greatest, so-called "royal" kurgans of the Classical Scythian culture are dated to the 4th century BC. These include Solokha, Bol’shaya Cymbalka, Chertomlyk, Oguz, Alexandropol and Kozel.
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The second greatest, so-called "aristocratic" kurgans, include Berdyanskiĭ, Tolstaya Mogila, Chmyreva Mogila, Five Brothers 8, Melitopolsky, Zheltokamenka and Krasnokutskiĭ. Kozel Kurgans Excavation at kurgan Sengileevskoe-2 found gold bowls with coatings indicating a strong opium beverage was used while cannabis was burning nearby. The gold bowls depicted scenes showing clothing and weapons. By the time of Classical Scythian culture, the North Caucasus appears to no longer be under Scythian control.
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The place is inhabited from ancient times. Northwest of the village there are ancient kurgans. Roman remnants were also found. The first charter mentions it in 1255 as Mezlen.
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These kurgans also contained a wide assortment metalworks. This trend suggests the eventual emergence of a marked social hierarchy. Their practice of storing relatively great wealth in burial kurgans was probably a cultural influence from the more ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent to the south. According to Giulio Palumbi (2008), the typical red-black ware of Kura–Araxes culture originated in eastern Anatolia, and then moved on to the Caucasus area.
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Rudenko 1969, Tab. LI Outstanding examples of kurgans include the necropoleis of Pazyryk in Altai, Noin Ula in Mongolia, and Arzhan in Tuva, where organic matter was preserved by the permafrost. Thus, felt carpets which decorated the inner walls of the burial chamber, decorated sadels and various kinds of clothing were also found. Although many large kurgans have been robbed of their contents by grave robbers, exceptional examples still remain, including countless gold objects.
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The Gorokhovo people (originating in the 7th century BC) were not immediately dissolved by the Sargats and coexisted with them until the 3rd century BC. If the early stage of the Sargat culture (5th - early 3rd century BC) co-existed with its neighbors, then from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD Sargats have no rivals throughout the Middle . Kurgans in the valley are associated with Sargats (and partly with Baitovo tribes) first of all. The number of kurgans reaches 177, a diameter of individual ones more than 60 m. Many kurgans contain highly artistic artifacts made of gold, silver, gemstones and numerous decorations made in workshops of Ancient Egypt, slave-owning states of the and Central Asia.
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Peter Pallas during the described the kurgans Tyutrinskiy, Savinovskiy and Peschaniy-I. In 1861, published information about kurgans and hill forts of the Yalutorovsky, Tyumensky and Kurgansky Okrugs. In 1890, Ivan Slovtsov published a list of burial mounds and hill forts of Tobolsk Governorate, including information about the burial mounds Krasnogorskiy-I and Krasnogorskiy Borok, also the hill forts Zmeevo and Lizunovo (Krasnogorskoe). In 1893, became the first to discover traces of the Andronovo culture near Yalutorovsk.
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The eastern part more male-oriented, and the western part was more female-inclusive. The eastern part also had a higher number of males buried in kurgans, and its deities were male-oriented.
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One kurgan at Ulsky was found measured at 15 meters in height and contained more than 400 horses. Kurgans from the 7th century BC, when the Scythians were raiding the Near East, typically contain objects of Near Eastern origin. Kurgans from the late 7th century however, contain few Middle Eastern objects, but rather objects of Greek origin, pointing to increased contacts between the Scythians and Greek colonists. Important Early Scythian sites have also been found in the forest steppes of the Dnieper.
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These works formed the basis of the collection held by the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Catherine the Great was so impressed from the material recovered from the kurgans or burial mounds that she ordered a systematic study be made of the works. However, this was well before the development of modern archaeological techniques. The Pazyryk carpet Nikolai Veselovsky (1848-1918) was a Russian archaeologist specializing in Central Asia who led many of the most important excavations of kurgans in his day.
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They also worked tin and arsenic.Edens, page 56 This form of burial in a tumulus or "kurgan", along with wheeled vehicles, is the same as that of the Kurgan culture which has been associated with the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. In fact, the black burnished pottery of especially early Trialeti kurgans is similar to Kura-Araxes pottery.Edens page 58 In a historical context, their impressive accumulation of wealth in burial kurgans, like that of other associated and nearby cultures with similar burial practices, is particularly noteworthy.
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Piotrovsky, 28-30 One of the first sites discovered by modern archaeologists were the kurgans Pazyryk, Ulagan district of the Altay Republic, south of Novosibirsk. The name Pazyryk culture was attached to the finds, five large burial mounds and several smaller ones between 1925 and 1949 opened in 1947 by a Russian archeologist, Sergei Rudenko; Pazyryk is in the Altay Mountains of southern Siberia. The kurgans contained items for use in the afterlife. The famous Pazyryk carpet discovered is the oldest surviving wool pile oriental rug.
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The "golden man" on the winged leopard has become one of the main symbols of Kazakhstan. Many "balbals" or kurgan stelae, monoliths shaped like human figures, have been found topping kurgans, or surrounding them in groups.
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As a result of bugrovschiki most treasures of the Siberian kurgans are lost forever. In 1712, a commander of Shadrinsk, prince Vasily Meshchersky, began excavations of kurgans to get gold, silver and copper items to replenish the state treasury by order of the Siberian governor prince . During the years 1715-1717 governor Gagarin sent Siberian treasures to Peter the Great four times. 250 ancient gold jewelry pieces sent by Gagarin became known as the , which is now available in the State Hermitage at the gallery of jewels called "The Scythian Gold".
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Other significant Wielbark settlements in the area were encountered in Swarożyn and Stanisławie, both in Tczew County.Archaeological Rescue Excavations by Mirosław Fudziński and Henryk Paner, Archeologia Żywa (Living Archeology), special English issue 2005Museum of Archeology in Gdańsk web site Stone circle in Odry Many Wielbark graves were flat, but kurgans are also characteristic and common. In the case of kurgans, the grave was covered with stones, which were surrounded by a circle of larger stones. These were covered with earth and a solitary stone or stela often put on top.
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Also noteworthy is a granite monument to Yermak, constructed to a design by Alexander Brullov in 1839. The town's vicinity is rich in ancient kurgans and pagan shrines, some of which date back to the 10th century BCE.
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The Srubnaya culture is named for its use of timber constructions within its burial pits. Its cemeteries consisted of five to ten kurgans. Burials included the skulls and forelegs of animals and ritual hearths. Stone cists were occasionally employed.
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The burial rite is mostly cremation. The most numerous finds are household utensils and pottery. As a general observation, the Gnyozdovo tumuli have parallels with the "druzhina kurgans" of Chernigov, such as the Black Grave.Сизов В.И. Курганы Смоленской губернии.
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Six male Scythian samples from kurgans at Starosillya and Glinoe were successfully analyzed. These were found to be carriers of haplogroup R1b1a1a2 (R1b-M269). The Scythians were found to be closely related to the Afanasievo culture and the Andronovo culture.
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The burial customs of the sedentary societies were characterised by great variation. In the west Siberian chalcolithic, simple flat graves are found, in which the corpse is laid flat on its back. In the early Bronze Age, kurgans were erected for the first time, whose inhabitants were members of a newly developed warrior class (to judge from the grave goods interred with them) and were not buried in simple pits, but in wooden or stone structures. Already in the middle Bronze Age phase of the Andronovo culture, kurgans are found, but without differentiation of their grave goods.
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Burial sites were both flat graves and barrows (kurgans), and cremation was dominant. Scholar M. Kazanski identified the 6th- century Prague (Prague-Korchak) culture and Sukow-Dziedzice group as Sclaveni archaeological cultures, and the Penkovka culture (Prague-Penkovka) was identified as Antes.
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Maykop inhumation practices were characteristically Indo-European, typically in a pit, sometimes stone- lined, topped with a kurgan (or tumulus). Stone cairns replace kurgans in later interments. The Maykop kurgan was extremely rich in gold and silver artifacts; unusual for the time.
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Covering the body in ocher was less common than in the earlier Yamnaya culture. Burial pits sometimes had a timber cover. They were generally inserted into kurgans of the Yamnaya culture. Poltavka burials are characterized by an increased presence of ornaments and weapons.
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Hatházi & Szende, pp. 392–393 "Spectacular burials of Cuman leaders (with a full panoply of material objects and a horse)", though rare, still occurred even after 1300;Lyublyanovics, p. 165 actual kurgans were only rarely constructed in Kunság.Balázs & Kustár, pp. 26, 43; Hatházi & Szende, p.
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The Hallstatt Period D was the time of expansion of the Pomeranian culture, while the Western Baltic Kurgans culture occupied the Masuria-Warmia region of contemporary Poland.Kalendarium dziejów Polski (Chronology of Polish History), ed. Andrzej Chwalba, p. 10–11, Jacek PoleskiU źródeł Polski, p.
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Page 90. There are about 3,000 burial mounds arranged in eight clusters of kurgans. Of these, about 1,300 mounds have been explored by Russian and Soviet archaeologists, starting in 1874. There is some disagreement among scholars as to which ethnic element predominated at Gnyozdovo.
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Indo-European Migrations. Source David Anthony (2007). The Horse, The Wheel and Language According to David W. Anthony, between 3100–3000 BCE, a massive migration of Indo-Europeans from the Yamnaya culture took place into the Danube Valley. Thousands of kurgans are attributed to this event.
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Near the village of Kavtiskhevi in Kaspi Municipality some very ancient kurgans have been found. They were excavated by Makharadze in 2007. Materials recovered from these excavations can be related to remains from the metal-working Late Chalcolithic site of Leilatepe on the Karabakh steppe.Narimanov et al.
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In 1929, the archaeologist Ya. Brik studied four kurgans of this culture near Ostapye village, Podvolochisk raion, Ukraine. He found ceramics, flint tools, bone and bronze decorations. Bottoms, walls and ceilings of the graves are layered with rocks. Skeletons are laid in contracted position towards the east.
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Takhtamukay (; , Teh̦utemyqwaj) is a rural locality (an aul) and the administrative center of Takhtamukaysky District of the Republic of Adygea, Russia, located northwest of Maykop. Population: Before 1990, it was called the settlement of Oktyabrsky (). Kurgans dated 2nd–1st millennium BCE are located in the vicinity of the aul.
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The Western Baltic Kurgans economy was traditional, based on animal husbandry (herds kept in a semi-wild state). Land tilling was done to a lesser extent and only later in this culture's history. Hunting, fishing and gathering were also important. Tool manufacturing was old-fashioned, mostly non-metallic.
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A number of buildings house the Russian museum of folk and applied art. The atrium of the “Bread House” is used for concerts of Moscow musicians. The park grounds contain a group of burial mounds (Kurgans) that belong to the Early Slavs tribe Vyatichs dated to the 11th-13th century.
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Seventy-five percent of the remaining area of Crimea consists of semiarid prairie lands, a southward continuation of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, which slope gently to the northwest from the foothills of the Crimean Mountains. Numerous kurgans, or burial mounds, of the ancient Scythians are scattered across the Crimean steppes.
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But in the nearby area were found the traces of Krivichs, another Slavic group of tribes, who lived to the north. This shows that this area could be a mixed ethnic zone. Archeological investigations in 1926 of several tumuli (kurgans) near the village discovered Radimichs’ burial sites referred to 10th-13th centuries.
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Map of the Republic of Kalmykia. Golden Temple in Elista. According to the Kurgan hypothesis, the upland regions of modern-day Kalmykia formed part of the cradle of Indo-European culture. Hundreds of Kurgans can be seen in these areas, known as the Indo-European Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture, Yamna culture).
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Excavations in Pantikapaeum Archaeological digs in Kerch were launched under Russian auspices in the middle of the 19th century. Since then the site of ancient Panticapaeum city on Mount Mithridat has been systematically excavated. Located nearby are several ancient burial mounds (kurgans) and excavated cities. Kerch takes part in UNESCO's "Silk Road" programme.
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Most of them, including the richest, are located on the Pontic steppe, in particular the area around the Dnieper Rapids. At the end of the 6th century BC, new funerary rites appeared, characterized by more complex kurgans. This new style was rapidly adopted throughout Scythian territory. Like before, elite burials usually contained horses.
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The kurgans contain mixed types of graves, with logs, stone boxes and dugouts. Burials are mostly solitary. The buried are laid in a crouched position, predominantly on the left side. The main burial is orientated with its head to the west, the others may somewhat deviate depending on their location in the kurgan.
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D. Forostyuk, Луганщина релігійна, Lugansk, Світлиця, 2004. or the Mongolic word "barimal" which means "handmade statue") are anthropomorphic stone stelae, images cut from stone, installed atop, within or around kurgans (i.e. tumuli), in kurgan cemeteries, or in a double line extending from a kurgan. The stelae are also described as "obelisks" or "statue menhirs".
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It was first mentioned in 1267. But most probably the settlement here was present much longer which may be indicated by kurgans and Slavic settlement (inhabited by Dziadoszyce tribe) near the village. In 1945 war front was moving along the village connected with heavy fights i.e. still visible in local findings such as duds.
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Arzhan-2 turned out to be an undisturbed (unlooted) burial. The excavations showed burials with rich grave goods including horses and gold artifacts. The total number of kurgans is several hundred, arranged in several parallel chains. In 2017 the large royal burial mound Tunnug 1 (Arzhan 0) was investigated by a Russian-Swiss expedition.
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In 1859 Count Sergei Stroganov invited Zabelin to excavate the Scythian tumulus graves in South Russia and the Crimea. He is credited with introducing stratigraphic methods in Russian field archaeology. It was he who excavated the Chertomlyk grave, one of the largest Scythian kurgans. His findings are now part of the Hermitage Museum collection.
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Numerous comparable burials have been found in neighboring western Mongolia. The tombs are Scythian-type kurgans, barrow-like tomb mounds containing wooden chambers covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones, dated to the 4th–3rd centuries BCE.A Special Issue on the Dating of Pazyryk. Source: Notes in the History of Art 10, no.
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The once-thriving cities of the Bosporus left extensive architectural and sculptural remains, while the kurgans continue to yield spectacular Greco-Sarmatian objects, the best examples of which are now preserved in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. These include gold work, vases imported from Athens, coarse terracottas, textile fragments, and specimens of carpentry and marquetry.
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The Abashevo culture is primarily represented by various kurgan cemeteries. Kurgans were surrounded by a circular ditch, and the grave pit had ledges at its edges. The body was either contracted on the side, or supine with raised knees, with legs flexed. Its funerary customs appear to have been derived from the Poltavka culture.
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80 percent of Poltavka graves contain males. Poltavka kurgans were typically surrounded by a circular ditch, with a single grave with ledges. Both male and female dead were buried on their left side or back on an organic mat, with the head oriented towards the east. On occasion the body was covered with ocher.
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Soyuqbulaq (also, Soyuq Bulaq) is a village in the Agstafa Rayon of Azerbaijan. It forms part of the municipality of Köçvəlili. In 2006, a French–Azerbaijani team discovered nine kurgans at the cemetery of Soyuqbulaq. They were dated to the beginning of the fourth millennium BC, which makes it the oldest kurgan cemetery in Transcaucasia.
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Thousands of (pre-Polan) kurgans, found by archaeologists in the Polan region, indicate that that land had a relatively high population density. They lived in small families in semi dug-outs ("earth-houses") and wore homespun clothes and modest jewellery. Before converting to Christianity, the inhabitants used to burn their dead and erect kurgan-like embankments over them.
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"...You struck me as landscape-artist... In Happiness the pictures of the steppe, the kurgans, the sheep are extraordinary. Yesterday I showed this story to S.P. and Lika,Sofia Kuvshinnikova, who in 1892 became a prototype for the Olga Dymova character in "The Grasshopper", and Lika Mizinova. and both were delighted," he wrote in June.Isaak Levitan.
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A 2005-monument commemorating the 700th anniversary of the first mention of Oborniki and the 60th anniversary of receiving town rights The earliest known human traces in this area comes from the Mesolithic Kurgans characteristic for early Bronze Age Lusatian culture have been found nearby, as well as artifacts such as Mesolithic flint tools and Neolithic axes.
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Writing about Altai kurgans, L.N. Gumilev states: "To the east from the tombs are standing chains of balbals, crudely sculpted stones implanted in the ground. Number of balbals at the tombs I investigated varies from 0 to 51, but most often there are 3–4 balbals per tomb". Similar numbers are also given by L. R. Kyzlasov.Kyzlasov L.R. Tuva... p. 62.
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Kurgans and rock paintings of Dubandi were investigated for the first time In 1960s and 1970s by the archeologist by archeologist Qardashkhan Aslanov and Sherqiyye Sadigzadeh, archaeological excavations were carried out in the nearby territory and the remains of ancient mounds were discovered, which are a group of stone and stone-sand rows. Mounds included in the list of archaeological sites in Azerbaijan.
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Igor Vasilievich Dubov (Игорь Васильевич Дубов; 1947–2002) was a Russian archaeologist who excavated one of the largest settlements on the Volga trade route, Timerevo. Dubov was born in Leningrad but spent his young years in Yaroslavl. He studied in the Leningrad University under Mikhail Artamonov and later was a professor there. In 1972 he went to study the kurgans near Yaroslavl.
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There are evidence of farming with evidence of irrigation. The Tagar produced animal art motifs (Scythian art) very similar to the Scythians of southern European Russia. Perhaps the most striking feature of the culture are huge royal kurgans fenced by stone plaques, with four vertical stelae marking the corners. Burials from the early Tagar period are characterized as single burials.
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4, p. 4. The spectacular burials at Pazyryk are responsible for the introduction of the term kurgan, a Russian word of Turkic origin, into general usage to describe these tombs. The region of the Pazyryk kurgans is considered the type site of the wider Pazyryk culture. The site is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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The site was abandoned towards the end of the ninth century, only to be revived half a century later. At least 400 druzhina kurgans were erected there in that period. The burial rite normally featured cremation. Excavations revealed an unusual amount of Scandinavian pottery and a surprising number of crosses, indicating that a large portion of the Norse population was Christianised.
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Bronze Ordos culture plaque, 4th century BC; a deer attacked by a wolf Kurgans are large mounds that are obvious in the landscape and a high proportion have been plundered at various times; many may never have had a permanent population nearby to guard them. To counter this, treasures were sometimes deposited in secret chambers below the floor and elsewhere, which have sometimes avoided detection until the arrival of modern archaeologists, and many of the most outstanding finds come from such chambers in kurgans that had already been partly robbed. Elsewhere the desertification of the steppe has brought once- buried small objects to lie on the surface of the eroded land, and many Ordos bronzes seem to have been found in this way. Russian explorers first brought Scythian artworks recovered from Scythian burial mounds to Peter the Great in the early 18th century.
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Other archaeological remains found in the village include a number of Bronze Age kurgans (3rd millennium BCE), evidence of Iron Age (2nd millennium BCE) and Chernyakhov culture (2nd–5th centuries CE) occupations, and pottery from the 17th and 18th century. In January 1920, the Black Zaporizhian cavalry regiment of the Ukrainian People's Army was stationed in the village as part of the First Winter Campaign.
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Anatolians on the Move: From Kurgans to Kanesh. 2020. Renfrew, A. C., 1987, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo- European Origins, London: Pimlico. James P. Mallory, "Kuro-Araxes Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997. In the Armenian hypothesis of Indo-European origins, this culture (and perhaps that of the Maykop culture) is identified with the speakers of the Anatolian languages.
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Significant part of the display consisted of archaeological findings, which Pol discovered in Kurgans and burials within the Katerinoslav province. Displayed collection embraced a wide range of cossack's relics, Egyptian antiquities, cult objects, coins from all over the world and paintings. The museum offered a unique position of the keeper-guide. The owner estimated the worth of his collection for 200 thousand karbovanets in silver.
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Burials were in kurgans with circular enclosures, some burials in stone boxes, and ground grave-pits enclosed with massive stone slabs. Grave inventory is found infrequently. People were buried in rectangular boxes of hewn stone slabs, with many slabs with round hollows or holes and decorated with drawings of colored mineral pigments on inner side. Deceased were laid head to the west, facing the east.
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To prove their assumptions, Davis-Kimball and Joachim Burger had a genetic test done. They were able to prove that the genetics of the Kazakh girl were almost 100 percent consistent with the genetic profile of the "Amazon women" discovered in kurgans. The connection of the fabled Amazons to the Kazakh tribe in western Mongolia is not conclusively proven. She died April 3, 2017 in Ventura, California.
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Branicki Palace, also known as the "Polish Versailles". Archaeological discoveries show that the first settlements in the area of present-day Białystok occurred during the Stone Age. Tombs of ancient settlers can be found in the district of Dojlidy. In the early Iron Age, people settled in the area producing kurgans, the tombs of the chiefs in the area located in the current village of Rostołty.
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Another important site in the area, from about the same era, is Hajji Firuz Tepe, where some of the oldest archaeological evidence of grape-based wine was discovered. Kul Tepe Jolfa is a site in the Jolfa County about 10 km south from the Araxes River. It dates to Chalcolithic period (5000–4500 BC). Se Girdan kurgans are located on the south shore of Lake Urmia.
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All horse nomad cultures shared the burial of the dead in barrow graves which are known as kurgans. Their size is very variable, with a radius of between 2 and 50 metres and a height of less than one or more than 18 metres, evidently reflecting differences in social hierarchy. Kurgan of Pazyryk in Altai. In the centre is a shaft and detritus left by tomb robbers.
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A tradition of erecting burial mounds (kurgans) became widespread in the Bronze Age. The burials of all known cultures of that age have been found in the earthen hillocks studied at Mamai-Hora, i.e. the Pit-Grave, Catacomb, Multiroller ceramics and Logs cultures. Each of them had its own specific funeral practices, burial rites and grave goods made of clay, bronze, stone, and flint.
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The lowermost layer dates to the early fourth millennium BC, attesting a multilayer settlement of Leyla-Tepe culture.Najaf Museyibli, Poylu II Report On Excavations of Poylu II Settlement At Kilometre Point 408.8 of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Baku – Azerbaijan, 2008 Among the sites associated with this culture, the Soyugbulag kurgans or barrows are of special importance.Najaf Museyibly, Archeological Excavations Along the Route of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan Crude Oil Pipeline and the South Caucasus Gas Pipeline, 2002–2005 The excavation of these kurgans, located in Kaspi Municipality, in central Georgia, demonstrated an unexpectedly early date of such structures on the territory of Azerbaijan. They were dated to the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. The culture has also been linked to the north Ubaid period monuments,Гуп «Наследие» В. Л. Ростунов in particular, with the settlements in the Eastern Anatolia Region (Arslantepe, Coruchu-tepe, Tepechik, etc.).
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Rudenko's most striking discovery was the body of a tattooed Pazyryk chief: a thick-set, powerfully built man who had died when he was about 50. Parts of the body had deteriorated, but much of the tattooing was still clearly visible (see image). Subsequent investigation using reflected infrared photography revealed that all five bodies discovered in the Pazyryk kurgans were tattooed.Findings published in Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia, Spring 2005.
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Near the central burial complex, horses, cattle, sheep, goats and dogs may be found. Several Potapovka kurgans were constructed on top of earlier Poltavka kurans, which they destroyed. According to David W. Anthony, this is hardly accidental, testifying to a "symbolic connection" between the Poltavka and Potapovka people. An interesting feature of the Potapovka grave is the replacement of the head of the decapitated individual with that of a horse.
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Similar kurgans have been found at Kavtiskhevi, Kaspi Municipality, in central Georgia. Several other archaeological sites seem to belong to the same ancient cultural tradition as Soyuq Bulaq. They include Berikldeebi, Kavtiskhevi, Leilatepe, Boyuk Kesik, and Poylu, Agstafa, and are characterized by pottery assemblages "mainly or totally in the North Mesopotamian tradition".Marro 2007, 78Mariya Ivanova, The Black Sea and the Early Civilizations of Europe, the Near East and Asia.
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The average distance between Yaz sites is 879 m. Most of them are dated to Yaz II-III periods, but once was found Yaz I decorated pottery. In the northern cluster of the sites mostly there is no trace of later occupation, indicating they were abandoned in the Iron Age. At the village Anaw east of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan are two mounds (kurgans), of which the south kurgan's Iron Age materials (Anaw IV) from ca.
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The most important sites are located in the northwestern parts of Scythian territories in the forest steppes of the Dnieper, and the southeastern parts of Scythian territories in the North Caucasus. At this time it was common for the Scythians to be buried in the edges of their territories. Early Scythian sites are characterized by similar artifacts with minor local variations. Kurgans from the Early Scythian culture have been discovered in the North Caucasus.
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Before Polosmak and her crew reached the Ice Maiden's chamber, they hit upon a second later burial in the same kurgan positioned on top of the Maiden's wooden tomb chamber. The contents included a stone and wood coffin containing a skeleton, along with three horses. Polosmak believes that this secondary burial was that of an outside group, perhaps of subordinate peoples, who considered it honorable to bury their dead in Pazyryk kurgans.
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In truth, the site had its origins in a sandbank of the Tethys Ocean. For a long time it was an island in the Molochna River, which has since been silted up and now flows a short distance to the west. It is thought to represent the only sandstone outcrop in the Azov-Kuban Depression. The shape of this sand hill is similar to that of kurgans that dot the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
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Tsnori Tsnori () is a town (since 1965) in Georgia’s Kakheti region. It is located in the Alazani Valley near the town Sighnaghi and has a population of 4,815 (2014 Georgia Census). Georgian gold lion excavated at Tsnori Archaeological digs at Tsnori have revealed clusters of kurgans which contain the most elaborate burial mounds among the Early Bronze Age kurgan cultures of South Caucasia.Melvin Ember, Peter N. Peregrine (2001), Encyclopedia of Prehistory, p. 35.
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In some regions, kurgans are surrounded by various kinds of stone enclosure. The more or less rectangular tombs of the later Tagar culture were sometimes surrounded by a row of stones at the edge of the kurgan mound, which was broken up by higher stones at regular intervals - later these were usually just at the corners.N. L. Tschlenowa: "Tagarskaja kultura." In: M. G. Moschkowa: Stepnaja polosa Asiatskoi tschasti SSSR w skifo-sarmatskoje wremja.
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Its inhumation practices in tumuli are similar to the Yamnaya culture and Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture. Flat graves are a component of the Abashevo culture burial rite, as in the earlier Fatyanovo culture. The kurgans of the Abashevo culture are to be distinguished from the flat graves of the Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture. A well-known Abashevo kurgan in Pepkino contained the remains of twenty-eight males who appear to have died violent deaths.
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A kurgan burial ground dating back to the mid-second half of the XIV century has also been found. In all 23 burials were revealed. The main burials were in five hillocks, while the rest were inlet into the Scythian period kurgans. Also, 700 meters to the south of Mamai-Hora burial mounds, the Mamai-Surka burial ground dating back to the end of the 13th and beginning of the 15th century was researched.
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Many famous kurgans are found in Samukh. They belong to Bronze/Stone ages. Also, there is a famous natural monuments-old trees the age of which can be more than a millennium (1000 years). One of the trees has been named as Düldül, in honor of Imam Ali's horse. One of the historical sightseeing of the region includes the Imamzadeh Tomb (VIII century), the height of this tower reaches 12m and “Koroglu Tower”.
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The Suvorovo culture, also called the Suvorovo group, was a Copper Age culture which flourished on the northwest Pontic steppe and the lower Danube from 4500 BC to 4100 BC. The Suvorovo culture is entirely defined by its burials. These include kurgans and flat graves. Burials are oriented towards the east or northeast, in a supine position with legs either flexed or extended. Roofs of the burial chambers are often covered with stone slabs or logs.
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As a result of her work on her doctoral thesis, she moved to Central Asia in 1985 to study nomads. She became known above all for her research of the "Amazon tombs" in Southern Russia. In the 1990s, Davis-Kimball and her Russian archeology colleague, Leonid Jablonski, found in southern Russia and Ukraine numerous tombs (kurgans) of Scythian or Sarmatian women who had been buried along with weapons and armor. An important locality is a necropolis at Pokrovka.
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The most important of these finds is the Melgunov Kurgan. This kurgan contains several objects of Near Eastern origin so similar to those found at the kurgan in Kelermesskaya that they were probably made in the same workshop. Most of the Early Scythian sites in this area are situated along the banks of the Dnieper and its tributaries. The funerary rites of these sites are similar but not identical to those of the kurgans in the North Caucasus.
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Burial customs, at least in southern Poland, included raising kurgans. The urn with the ashes was placed on the mound or on a post thrust into the ground. In that position, few such urns survived, which may be the reason why Slavic burial sites in Poland are rare. All dead, regardless of social status, were cremated and afforded a burial, according to Arab testimonies (one from the end of the 9th century and another one from about 930).
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The shores of all Siberian lakes, which filled the depressions during the Lacustrine period, abound in remains dating from the Neolithic age. Countless kurgans (tumuli), furnaces, and other archaeological artifacts bear witness to a dense population. Some of the earliest artifacts found in Central Asia derive from Siberia.The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Page 724, by Philip W. Goetz, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc, 1991 The Yeniseians were followed by the Uralic Samoyeds, who came from the northern Ural region.
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The recent studies indicate that most of arrowheads and spearheads were fused from crude materials of local origin with supplementation of imported tin. On the III layer of the, I Kul-tepe were found wall remnants of four-shaped houses, monochrome and polychrome clay pots and stone tools. In the Dize necropolis revealed in 2008, were found a pitcher and a cutting tool made from flint. Sharur archaeological expedition investigated three kurgans, grave monuments and fragments of painted dishes.
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Arsenical bronze artefacts are present. Their settlements were of pit houses and they buried their dead in stone cists covered by kurgans and surrounded by square stone enclosures. Industrially, they were skilled metalworkers, the diagnostic artifacts of the culture being a bronze knife with curving profiles and a decorated handle and horse bridles. The pottery has been compared to that discovered in Inner Mongolia and the interior of China, with burials bronze knives similar to those from northeastern China.
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They mined deposits of copper ore in the Altai Mountains from around the 14th century BC. Bronze objects were numerous, and workshops existed for working copper. The Andronovo dead were buried in timber or stone chambers under both round and rectangular kurgans (tumuli). Burials were accompanied by livestock, wheeled vehicles, cheek-pieces for horses, and weapons, ceramics and ornaments. Among the most notable remains are the burials of chariots, dating from around 2000 BC and possibly earlier.
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Although there are disparities in the wealth of the grave goods, there seems to be no special marker for the chief. This deficit does not exclude the possibility of a chief. In the later kurgans, one finds that the kurgan is exclusively reserved for a chief and his retinue, with ordinary people excluded. This development suggests a growing disparity of wealth, which in turn implies a growth in the wealth of the whole community and an increase in population.
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A variety of idols, mostly of female character, were found in the Butmir site, along with dugouts. With the Indo-European migrations of the Bronze Age came the first use of metal tools in the region. Along with this came the construction of burial mounds--tumuli, or kurgans. Remains of these mounds can be found in northwestern Bosnia near Prijedor, testament to not only denser settlement in the northern core of today's Republika Srpska but also Bronze Age relics.
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Archaeological finds including many historical monuments and kurgans in the region speak of early human habitation. Balakan was a part of Caucasian Albania. A Greek writer of the time who authored books on the battle between the Roman troops and Caucasian Albanians on the bank of Alazani (Qanıx) river in 65 AD., described the locals as calm, prideful and full of courage. In the 7th century, Balakan was invaded by Arabs and Balakən settlement was destroyed.
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The clans of all ten regions gather in the village of Yelo for a biennial cultural celebration. There is also a large contingent of "Old Believers" who fled to Altai when they split from the Russian Orthodox Church over 300 years ago. They were taken in by the Altai people, and are now integrated into the fabric of Altai culture. The UNESCO World Heritage Site "Golden Mountains" protects the Ukok Plateau, on which there are many standing stones and kurgans.
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Scholars have proposed multiple hypotheses about when, where, and by whom PIE was spoken. The Kurgan hypothesis, first put forward in 1956 by Marija Gimbutas, has become the most popular. It proposes that the original speakers of PIE were the Yamnaya culture associated with the kurgans (burial mounds) on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. According to the theory, they were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated the horse, which allowed them to migrate across Europe and Asia in wagons and chariots.
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Dubăsari is the site of one of the oldest settlements in Moldova, and the Transnistrian region. Stone Age artifacts have been found in the area, and there are several kurgans (presumed Scythian) around the city. First mentions of modern Dubăsari date to the beginning of the 16th century, as a fair populated by Moldavian peasants. The settlement became part of the Russian Empire in 1792, and was granted city status in 1795. It was part of Kherson Governorate from 1803 to 1922.
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The Ingala Valley () is an archaeological district in the area between the Tobol and Iset rivers. It is the largest one in the south of the Tyumen Oblast, and belongs to the Iset cultural and historical province. It has 177 kurgans, 55 archaeological sites of federal significance and 5 regional natural monuments. Archaeological sites in the valley date from the Mesolithic (8th-7th millennium BC) to the Middle Ages (15th century) and include marks of the Andronovo culture and Ugric (ancient Hungarians) civilizations.
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In 1917 he was a founder participant in the Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia (KIPS), along with several colleagues of the IRGO Map Commission. Rudenko delivered lectures in the Leningrad University from 1921 to 1954. In 1947-1950 and 1954 he was sent by the Soviet Archaeology Institute to explore the kurgans in the Altay Mountains. During the excavation of Pazyryk tombs, he discovered the world's most spectacular tattooed mummy.
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Collective and individual burials were observed in the burial mounds. The burials were mainly characterized by kurgans, simple sand graves and stone boxes encircled with cromlechs (observed mainly in Gobustan, Karabakh, Nakhchivan, Talish regions). People were buried in a bent form, on their left or right side or on their back, however, there were also samples of corps buried in a sitting form. The remnants of the Talysh-Mugan culture were first revealed by Isak Jafarzadeh in Uzun-tepe in Jalilabad.
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Even his report of cannabis inhalation in small groups during the funeral have been corroborated by finds from the Pazyryk burials.Herodotus, Histories 4.74–75 This corroboration not only affirms the accuracy of Herodotus, but also indicates the cultural homogeneity of the steppe peoples of west Siberia, Central Asia and the region north of the Black Sea. The great kurgans of the Xiongnu present a rather different picture, however. There the burial chambers are deeper and were accessed by a ramp.
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The corpse was interred in a crouched position or cremated. In the somewhat later Karasuk culture on the middle Yenissei, the tombs include rectangular stone enclosures, which were further developed into the stone-cornered kurgans characteristic of the area by the Tagar culture in the Iron Age. A special position belongs to the early Iron Age Slab Grave culture in the Transbaikal area; their dead were sometimes interred in stone cist graves.A. D. Zybiktarow: Kultura plitotschnych mogil Mongolii i Sabaikalja.
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A typical feature is the deposition of horse harnesses at the side of the central burial pit, but in contrast with the Arzhan-period monuments there are as a rule no accompanying horse burials.Savinov D.G., Early nomads, pp. 84–85 So-called "moustached kurgans" with stone curves, most typical for Early Nomads of Kazakhstan, are also known in Tuva. Stone structures with spherical tops on the ends of the "moustaches" in Kazakhstan are analogus to Aldy-Bel surface structures in Tuva.
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The Shtyki Memorial is connected with other monuments, particularly the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the wall of the Moscow Kremlin, and the Kurgan of Glory in Minsk. On 3 December 1966, in the commemoration of the 25 summer anniversary of the defeat of Hitler's troops in the environs of Moscow, ashes of the soldiers were carried to the Kremlin. The Shtyki complex is sometimes confused with the Belarusian Kurgan of Glory complex due to their similarities. Both are memorial complexes built on kurgans.
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Typical grave goods of the Suvorovo culture include ceramics both the Gumelnița–Karanovo culture and the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, and shell-tempered wares that are typical of the steppe. The Suvorovo kurgans are the earliest ones to appear in Southeast Europe. Its features are characteristic of cultures on the steppes and forest- steppes further east in Ukraine and southern Russia. In accordance with the Kurgan hypothesis, the Suvorovo culture is evidence of a westward expansion of early Indo-European peoples from their homeland on the steppe.
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In Omsk Yadrintsev collected contemporary records on various scientific and social problems of the "aliens" (indigenous peoples in Russian colonial parlance), peasants, and migrants. From Omsk, under a contract with the Russian Geographical Society, he traveled twice across Siberia and the Altai, researching economy and geography, archaeology and ethnography, anthropology and linguistics. During his travels in the Altai in 1878-1880, Yadrintsev collected data about kurgans, fortresses and other archaeological monuments, recorded legends about some of them, and produced sketches of many archaeological finds.
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The Scythians' horse warriors appear to have used scale or possibly lamellar armour, evident both from contemporary illustrations and burial finds in kurgans. The armour was made from small plates of iron or bronze. Unique to the Scythians, about 20% of the females found in graves were dressed for war, some including armour, which may have inspired the Greek tales of Amazons. Due to the semi-rigid nature of the armour, the Scythian variety was made as breast- and back-plates, with separate shoulder pieces.
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In 1956 Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994) first proposed the Kurgan hypothesis. The name originates from the kurgans (burial mounds) of the Eurasian steppes. The hypothesis suggests that the Indo-Europeans, a nomadic culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe (now part of Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia), expanded in several waves during the 3rd millennium BC. Their expansion coincided with the taming of the horse. Leaving archaeological signs of their presence (see battle-axe people), they subjugated the peaceful European neolithic farmers of Gimbutas' Old Europe.
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In the 9th century the Polish lands were still on the peripheries of medieval Europe as regards its major powers and events, but a measure of progress did take place in levels of civilization, as evidenced by the number of gords built, kurgans raised and movable equipment used. The tribal elites must have been influenced by the relative closeness of the Carolingian Empire; objects crafted there have occasionally been found.Wyrozumski, Dzieje Polski piastowskiej, pp. 52–54 Poland was populated by many tribes of various sizes.
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Ipatovo kurgan refers to kurgan 2 of the Ipatovo Barrow Cemetery 3, a cemetery of kurgan burial mounds, located near the town of Ipatovo in Stavropol Krai, Russia, some northeast of Stavropol. With a height of , it was one of the largest kurgans in the area. It was completely investigated in 1998–1999, revealing thirteen phases of construction and use, from the 4th millennium BCE to the 18th century. The first grave may have been a burial of the Maykop culture, which was destroyed by later graves.
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The Ilmen Slavs were also related to the Polabian Slavs in language and traditions (see old Novgorod dialect and Gostomysl for examples). They settled mostly Finnic areas in Northern Russia, moving along the major waterways, until they met the southward expansion of the Krivich in the modern-day Yaroslavl Oblast. They left a few archaeological monuments of the 6th-8th centuries, such as agricultural settlements and tall cone-like kurgans with cremated bodies in the Ladoga region. The most ancient settlement is dated to the 7th or 8th century.
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Due to written sources and archaeological investigation it is known from the 1st BC to 5th AD Kangui (Kanglu) tribes lived in the Talas River Valley. Similarity between the excavated materials of Taraz and the Kurgans of the Gynskyi and Usunskyi-Kanguiskyi tribes show the introduction of Turkic language. Mongolian features and elements appear in the settled culture of local mainly European population. According to A. N. Bernshtam's statement it was a period of ethnogenesis for Central Asia's modern Turkic populations Taraz was joined to the Western Turk Khanate.
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While the Golden Mountains of Altai are listed on the World Heritage List under natural criteria, it holds information about the nomadic Scythian culture. The permafrost in these mountains has preserved Scythian burial mounds. These frozen tombs, or kurgans, hold metal objects, pieces of gold, mummified bodies, tattooed bodies, sacrificed horses, wood/leather objects, clothes, textiles, etc. However, the Ukok Plateau (in the Altai Mountains) is a sacred site to the Altai people, so archeologists and scholars who are looking to excavate the site for human remains raise a great deal of controversy.
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Fine, gray vessels were also unearthed in the 9th-century "Blandiana A" cemeteries in the area of Alba-Iulia, which constitutes a "cultural enclave" in Transylvania. Near these cemeteries, necropolises of graves with west-east orientation form the distinct "Ciumbrud group". Female dress accessories from "Ciumbrud graves" are strikingly similar to those from Christian cemeteries in Bulgaria and Moravia. From an earlier date are the cremation cemeteries of the "Nuşfalau-Someşeni group" in northwestern Transylvania, with their 8th- and 9th-century tumuli, similar to the kurgans of East Slavic territories.
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The artifacts from Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages are represented particularly by over 230 burials in the vicinity of Lankaran. As a result of surveys and excavations, that began in Mingachevir in 1935, rich archeological evidence from the end of Eneolithic Period to the Late Middle Ages was revealed and more than 20,000 objects have been found. In 2006 a French–Azerbaijani team discovered nine kurgans at the cemetery of Soyuqbulaq. It was dated to the beginning of the 4th millennium BC, which makes it the oldest kurgan cemetery in Transcaucasia.
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The site of Tanais was occupied long before the Milesians founded an emporium there. A necropolis of over 300 burial kurgans near the ancient city shows that the site had already been occupied since the Bronze Age, and that kurgan burials continued through Greek and into even Roman times. The Tanais (Don) River, the Greek colony of the same name and other Greek colonies along the north coast of the Black Sea. Greek traders seem to have been meeting nomads in the district as early as the 7th century BC without a formal, permanent settlement.
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After that the conversation evolves around this issue: it appears that gold and silver are in abundance here in the kurgans, but nobody can find them, because all of them are under the spell. The old man warms up to the subject, which he seems to be obsessed with. It appears that he'd made numerous attempts at diggings, craving to find his 'happiness', but to no avail: all the treasures in the vicinity must have been put under spell. "But what will you do with the treasure when you find it?" the young man enquires.
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Similar wagon standards are known from Ur and Kish in Mesopotamia as well as the bronze age kurgans of Lčašen and Lalajan in Armenia. There rings for the reins have been found, which Orthamann connects with the Alaca Höyük standards. He takes the presence of pairs of bull skulls and foot bones in the graves, arranged in a pattern similar to a yoked pair as further evidence. Whether the disc and round-shaped standards here were used for guiding the reins, like the examples in Armenia and Mesopotamia, must remain a possibility.
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The contemporary and rather closely related Wielbark culture in (previously settled by the Przeworsk culture) Greater Poland, represented by the Kowalewko cemetery, lacks however for the most part the kurgans and the stone structures. The Wielbark people came here from Pomerania. In the course of the 1st and 2nd century CE the Wielbark culture expanded south, towards Greater Poland and Masovia, partially at the expense of the Przeworsk culture. Around the mid-1st century the Wielbark culture people forced out the Przeworsk population from northern Greater Poland and settled the area for about 150 years.
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Norsca is isomorphic in position within the "Old World" to Scandinavia, and similar in shape and climate. Its human occupants, the "Norse", were based on historical Vikings (though as the setting developed the Norse departed from the historical template increasingly). Norsca abuts the Realm of Chaos (also called Shadowlands by Norse, Kurgans and Hung and known as Chaos Wastes) to its north. To its south beyond the Sea of Claws lies the Empire and to the east and Southeast the Eastern Steppes and Kurgan nation and the kingdom of Kislev, respectively.
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It was a Roman province from 63 to 68 AD, under Emperor Nero. At the end of the 2nd century AD, King Sauromates II inflicted a critical defeat on the Scythians and included all the territories of the Crimea in the structure of his state. The prosperity of the Bosporan Kingdom was based on the export of wheat, fish and slaves. The profit of the trade supported a class whose conspicuous wealth is still visible from newly discovered archaeological finds, excavated, often illegally, from numerous burial barrows known as kurgans.
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Ancient China was threatened by the Xiongnu and their neighbours, the ancient states of modern Iran were opposed by the Massagetae and Sakas, and the Roman empire eventually was confronted by the Huns. The social changes are clearly indicated in the archaeological finds. Settlements are no longer found, members of the new elite were buried in richly furnished kurgans and completely new forms of art developed. In the damper steppes to the north, the sedentary pastoralist culture of the late Bronze Age developed under the influence of the material culture of the nomads.
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National Historical Library of Ukraine He marked 2 large and 12 small kurgans in 3 kilometres from the village.V. Antonovych // The archaeological map of the Kiev Governorate, 1895 // Kotliarka Before the Kievan Rus epoch it was a territory of Eastern Polans and approximately 8 kilometres to the north, on the left bank of the Irpin River Drevlians' land began.The origin, distribution and social order of the Slavs in VI - IX centuries. - History of Ukraine // Online study materials At the time of the Kievan Rus and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania this land belonged to the Principality of Kiev.
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Irmen people buried their deceased by inhumation in kurgan cemeteries, with up to 17 predominantly oriented SW graves in a single kurgan, bodies in crouched position, except when inhumation was conducted after ground thawed or bodies were first exposed, and bone remains were mixed. Kurgans were encircled by sometimes rectangular trenches open at the entrance, deposits include vessels and animal bones of funeral feasts. Individual graves were framed with wooden logs, covered by logs laid across. Accompanying inventory furnished ceramic vessels with food, darts with bronze heads, knives, deceased wore bronze jewelry ornaments of earrings, pendants, bead necklaces.
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Cannabis is indigenous to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent,"Marijuana and the Cannabinoids", ElSohly (p. 8). and its uses for fabric and rope dates back to the Neolithic age in China and Japan. It is unclear when cannabis first became known for its psychoactive properties. The oldest archeological evidence for the burning of cannabis was found in Romanian kurgans dated 3,500 BC, and scholars suggest that the drug was first used in ritual ceremonies by Proto-Indo-European tribes living in the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the Chalcolithic period, a custom they eventually spread throughout western Eurasia during the Indo-European migrations.
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Saka burials documented by modern archaeologists include the kurgans at Pazyryk in the Ulagan (Red) district of the Altai Republic, south of Novosibirsk in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia (near Mongolia). Archaeologists have extrapolated the Pazyryk culture from these finds: five large burial mounds and several smaller ones between 1925 and 1949, one opened in 1947 by Russian archaeologist Sergei Rudenko. The burial mounds concealed chambers of larch- logs covered over with large cairns of boulders and stones. The Pazyryk culture flourished between the 7th and 3rd century BC in the area associated with the Sacae.
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The Tula Oblast area has been inhabited since the Stone Age, as shown by discoveries of burial mounds (kurgans) and old settlements.For example, at the Satinskoye settlement site. By the Eighth Century, these lands were occupied by the Vyatichi, an East Slavic tribe who cultivated the land, traded, and worked at crafts, confirmed by records in property registers which mention an "ancient settlement" located at the confluence of the Upa River and Tulitsa River. The first mention of the city of Tula in 1146 is found in the Nikon Chronicle, in reference to the campaign of Prince Svyatoslav Olgovich of Chernigov.
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Distribution of Scythian kurgans and other sites along the Dnieper Rapids during the Classical Scythian period By the end of the 6th century BC, a new period begins in the material culture of the Scythians. Certain scholars consider this a new stage in the Scythian culture, while others consider it an entirely new archaeological culture. It is possible that this new culture arose through the settlement of a new wave of nomads from the east, who intermingled with the local Scythians. The Classical Scythian period saw major changes in Scythian material culture, both with regards to weapons and art style.
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The material culture of these settlements was even more Hellenized than those on the Crimea, and they were probably closely connected to Olbia, if not dependent it. Burials of the Late Scythian culture can be divided into two kurgans and necropolises, with necropolises becoming more and more common as time progresses. The largest such necropolis has been found at Ust-Alma. Because of close similarities between the material culture of the Late Scythians and that of neighbouring Greek cities, many scholars have suggested that Late Scythian cites, particularly those of the Lower Dnieper, were populated at last partly by Greeks.
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With a walking food source, the milk- drinking warriors defeated their plant-growing neighbours. Drinking milk, from cows, horses, or camels, is a behavior shared by many of history's greatest conquering peoples, whether Kurgans, Scythians, Arabs, or Mongols. Without continuing evolution, the ability to digest milk could never have arisen. In fact, it has done so several times, in different ways, in various places, and it has helped shape human history. Kelleher comments that the authors’ argument makes it difficult to imagine the language in which their book would have been written, were it not for the ability to digest milk.
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European traveler William of Rubruck mentioned them for the first time in the 13th century, seeing them on kurgans in the Cuman (Kipchak) country, he reported that Cumans installed these statues on tombs of their deceased. These statues are also mentioned in the 17th-century "Large Drawing Book", as markers for borders and roads, or orientation points. In the 18th century information about some kurgan stelae was collected by Pallas, Falk, Guldenshtedt, Zuev, Lepekhin, and in the first half of the 19th century by Klaprot, Duboa-de- Montpere and Spassky (Siberian obelisks). Count Aleksey Uvarov, in the 1869 ‘‘Works of the 1st Archeological Congress in Moscow (vol.
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It felt, like other cities of the region, the influence of Sogdian culture. The evidence suggests that in Taraz, as other cities in Southern Kazakhstan, Turks were the major ethnic element of the population in 4th-13th centuries, together with Sarts, Arabs and Persians . Written sources of Paleo- Anthropological material collected from Kurgans in Southern Kazakhstan show the existence of close ties between Taraz and the Kypchaks, Qarluq populations of nearby valleys. As a result of an internecine struggle amongst Turkish tribal leaders at the beginning of the 8th century the Turkish tribe in the Ili River Valley was divided into two branches: Yellow and Black.
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Until 2008 near Stilsko have been found more than 50 settlements of open type dated between 8th-10th century, as well around 200 burial mounds. It indicates a high economic, demographic, defense and political organization, and is argued to have been a capital of Eastern (Carpathian) Croats. According to archaeological material, by the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century it ceased to exist for now unknown reasons and the fire traces of possible enemy invasion are not considered as sufficient consequence. Excavations of many Slavic Kurgans and tombs in the Carpathian Mountains in the 1930s and 1960s were also attributed to the White Croats.
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Numerous sites belonging to the Wusun period in Zhetysu and the Tian Shan have been excavated. Most of the cemeteries are burial grounds with the dead interred in pit-graves, referred to as the Chil-pek group, which probably belong the local Saka population. A second group of kurgans with burials in lined "catacomb" chamber graves, of the so-called Aygîrdzhal group, are found together with the Chil-pek tombs from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE, and have been attributed to the Yuezhi. Graves of the Wusun period typically contain personal belongings, with the burials of the Aygîrdzhal group often containing weapons.
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Some of the treasures extracted by bugrovschiki appeared in private collections abroad. The most famous was the collection of Amsterdam mayor Nicolaes Witsen; a part of it is known only from tables drawn in the third edition of his book Noord en Oost Tartatye (1785), and the collection was lost after 1717. The first among scientists to get acquainted with findings of the Ingala Valley was Daniel Messerschmidt, whose expedition into the Siberia Governorate took place in 1719-1727. Gerhard Müller, who visited Siberia in 1733-1743 together with the Great Northern Expedition, stated that bugrovschiki activity was finished because the kurgans had been totally robbed.
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Makó (a town in modern Csongrád County) lends its name to a 3rd millennium BCE material culture (also known as the Makó-Caka or Kosihy-Caka culture) and other archaeological finds from the Copper/Bronze Ages. There are more than 180 registered archaeological sites around Makó, the most important of which are at Kiszombor. The Makó culture is often regarded as a subset or offshoot of the broader Vučedol culture, centred on Vukovar). While there is no consensus on the cultural affiliations of the Makó sites, kurgans, buckles, jewelry and equestrian equipment found near Makó may suggest links to nomads migrating from the Eurasian steppe.
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However, there were also single graves accompanied by stone structures/kurgans, as in the skeletal burials from the 1st and 2nd centuries CE that have been found in Sambia and the later ones (3rd–4th centuries) in Sudovia. From about 400 CE onward, cremation became the only means of corpse disposition, and the more familiar type of kurgan emerged, with each grave holding the remains of several persons. Samples of mature ancient-Baltic craftsmanship (2nd–4th century) have been found in places such as Żywa Woda and Szwajcaria, both in Suwałki County; and in Augustów County. The princely graves, as is typical, also contain many imports from southern and western Europe.
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The Aldy-Bel culture is known through its kurgans. They are rounded or oval mounds of boulders or rock fragments with larger stones at the base, 8 to 12 m across and 1 m height on average, grouped in pairs or occasionally three, located next to each other along a north–south axis. Typically there are several burials in a kurgan, up to seven or more: a central burial in a box of massive stone slabs, with other graves of younger people and children in smaller stone or wooden boxes on the sides except for eastern side. The graves are covered with stone slabs.
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Siberian Ice Maiden mummy - 5th century BCE In 1993, Polosmak was conducting archaeological reconnaissance of the high and barren Ukok Plateau when she discovered a spectacular archaeological find; a female mummy frozen in permafrost which she associated with the Pazyryk on the basis of intact clothing remaining on the well-preserved corpse. The Pazyryk were an Iron Age people who lived in the Altay Mountains and on the Ukok Plateau. Many tomb mounds (kurgans) have been found in the area and have been associated with the Pazyryk culture; a group that closely resembled that of the legendary Scythian people to the west. The term kurgan is in general usage to describe the barrow burials found in the area.
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Although archaeologists consider kurgans to be burial sites, the indigenous people believe that they are highly refined magnetic instruments for directing the flow of cosmic energy into the Earth. Thus, there is great local indignation about the excavation and removal of the Siberian Ice Maiden, an extraordinary 2,500-year-old mummy that had been preserved in permafrost. Gorno-Altaisk is the location of the National Museum of the Altai Republic, which houses the mummy "Altai Princess", the National Library of the Republic of Altai, the National Theatre of the Republic of Altai and the Municipal House of Culture. Regularly held national holiday Maslenitsa, Nowruz, Chaga – Bayram, received in February 2013 with the official status of the Republican celebration.
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The Vyatichs or more properly Vyatichi or Viatichi () were a native tribe of Early East Slavs who inhabited the Oka river, Moskva river and Don river. The Vyatichi had for a long time no princes, but the social structure was characterized by democracy and self-government. Like various other Slavic tribes, the Vyatichi people built kurgans on territory which belongs now to the modern Russian state. In the Primary Chronicle, it is recorded that the Vyatichi, Radimichs and Severians "had the same customs", all lived violent lifestyles, "burned their dead and preserved the ashes in urns set upon posts beside the highways", and they did not enter monogamous marriages but practiced polygamy, specifically polygyny, instead.
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Clancy Brown as the Kurgan The Kurgan—who was taken in by the Kurgan tribe and named Victor—was born in what is now Russia on the border of the Caspian Sea. His tribe, the Kurgans, Juan Ramírez notes, are infamous for their cruelty, and were known to "toss children into pits full of starved dogs, and watch them fight for [the] meat" for amusement. In 1536, the Kurgan hires himself out to Clan Fraser in their battle with the MacLeod clan, in exchange for allowing him to be the one to kill Connor MacLeod. In the midst of the battle, the Kurgan challenges MacLeod and runs him through with his broadsword.
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Glazkov burials brought new funeral traditions, the deceased are oriented down river, instead of geographical direction, crouched position, and intentionally broken artifacts, likely to protect the living from the danger presented by a deceased. The end of the Glazkov time in the southern portion of Baikal eastern area is brought by influx of people from the Tuva and north-western Mongolia, who brought a distinctive tradition of stone kurgans with fences (chereksurs), which resulted in a formation in the Central Asian steppes of a Slab Grave Culture that became an eastern wing of a huge nomadic world in Eurasia, which produced in the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE a bright civilization known as Scythian-Siberian World.
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The evolution of the power structure within the Germanic societies in Poland and elsewhere can be traced to some degree by examining the "princely" graves - burials of chiefs, and even hereditary princes, as the consolidation of power progressed. Those appear from the beginning of the Common Era and are located away from ordinary cemeteries, singly or in small groups. The bodies were inhumed in wooden coffins and covered with kurgans, or interred in wooden or stone chambers. Luxurious Roman-made gifts and fancy barbarian emulations (such as silver and gold clasps with springs, created with an unsurpassed attention to detail, dated 3rd century CE from Wrocław Zakrzów), but not weapons, were placed in the graves.
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In a corner of one grave chamber of the Pazyryk cemetery was a fur bag containing cannabis seed, a censer filled with stones, and the hexapod frame of an inhalation tent – these are believed to have been utilized at the end of the funerary ritual for purification. Other undisturbed kurgans have been found to contain remarkably well-preserved remains, comparable to the earlier Tarim mummies of Xinjiang. Bodies were preserved using mummification techniques and were also naturally frozen in solid ice from water seeping into the tombs. They were encased in coffins made from hollowed trunks of larch (which may have had sacral significance) and sometimes accompanied by sacrificed concubines and horses.
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Scholarly research of the archaeological background of the region between the Urals and the Pacific began in the reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725), who ordered the collection of Scythian gold hoards and thereby rescued the contents of several robbed graves before they were melted down. During his reign, several expeditions were charged with the scientific, anthropological and linguistic research of Siberia, including the Second Kamchatka Expedition of the Dane Vitus Bering (1733-1743). Scholars also took an interest in archaeology and carried out the first archaeological excavations of Siberian kurgans. After a temporary reduction of interest in the first half of the nineteenth century, archaeological research in Siberia reached new heights in the late nineteenth century.
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The historical researches defined the settlement of the people in Sharur before Christ. The archaeological excavations on the territory of Sharur which is mentioned as Sharuk in the epos of "The Book of Dede Korkut" dating back to the period 1300 ago revealed the settlement and burial places of the Neolithic, Bronze Age as well as Antique period. The settlement Oghlangaya covering an area of 40 hectares of the Garatepe Mountain of the region dates back to the 2-1st millenniums B.C. The region accounts for a number of archeological monuments and settlements rich in the patterns of material culture reflecting the activity and lifestyle of ancient people. These are the ancient, settlement, towers, cemeteries, Kurgans and architectural monuments.
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According to Marija Gimbutas, the process of "Indo-Europeanization" of Europe was essentially a cultural, not a physical transformation. It is understood as a migration of Yamnaya people to Europe, as military victors, successfully imposing a new administrative system, language and religion upon the indigenous groups, referred to by Gimbutas as Old Europeans. The Yamnaya people's social organization, especially a patrilinear and patriarchal structure, greatly facilitated their effectiveness in war. According to Gimbutas, the social structure of Old Europe "contrasted with the Indo-European Kurgans who were mobile and non-egalitarian" with a hierarchically organised tripartite social structure; the IE were warlike, lived in smaller villages at times, and had an ideology that centered on the virile male, reflected also in their pantheon.
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Compared to other East Slavic tribes, the area of the Croats stands out because of very present tiled tombs, and in the 11th and 13th century their appearance in Western Dnieper region is attributed to the Croats, and sometimes also Tivertsi, and Ulichs. Scholars attribute to the Croats also the forts West and North of river Prut and in Northern Bukovina; Revno, Červona Dibrova, Kodin, Bila, Široka Poljana, Klokučka, Grobnica, Červenovo, Orosijevo, Červone, Ungvár. In the territory of Czech Republic, a significant number of graves with kurgans dated 8th-10th century have been found around the Elbe river where was the presumed territory by the White Croats and Zlicans, as well among Dulebes in the South, and Moravians in the East.
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Judging from the materials available, Kargaly mines were discovered by the Yamno-Poltavka community, a nomadic population of the stockbreeders. Numerous tribes of this community occupied vast territories in Eastern Europe, from the southern Urals to the Carpathian foothills, adjacent to the middle Danube steppe in Pannonia. The nomadic lifestyle of many cultures in the northern zone of this extensive territory, formerly of the Circumpontic Metallurgical Province, is evidenced in the thousands of burial kurgans and complete absence of settlement remains. Excavations of the big open cast on one of the lots of the Kargaly complex (the hill of the ancient settlement Gorny) exhibited connections to the early groups of pastoral tribes who inhabited the southern Urals region of Kargaly.
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Iaroslav Lebedynsky said that Europoid depictions in the Ordos region should be attributed to a "Scythian affinity". "Europoid faces in some depictions of the Ordos, which should be attributed to a Scythian affinity" Portraits found in the Noin-Ula excavations demonstrate other cultural evidences and influences, showing that Chinese and Xiongnu art have influenced each other mutually. Some of these embroidered portraits in the Noin-Ula kurgans also depict the Xiongnu with long braided hair with wide ribbons, which is seen to be identical with the Ashina clan hair-style.Camilla Trever, "Excavations in Northern Mongolia (1924–1925)", Leningrad: J. Fedorov Printing House, 1932 Well-preserved bodies in Xiongnu and pre-Xiongnu tombs in the Mongolian Republic and southern Siberia show both Mongoloid and Caucasian features.
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Gimbutas postulated that in "Old Europe", the Aegean and the Near East, a single great Triple Goddess was worshipped, predating what she deemed as a patriarchal religion imported by the Kurgans, nomadic speakers of Indo-European languages. Gimbutas interpreted iconography from Neolithic and earlier periods of European history evidence of worship of a triple goddess represented by: # "stiff nudes", birds of prey or poisonous snakes interpreted as "death" # mother-figures interpreted as symbols of "birth and fertility" # moths, butterflies or bees, or alternatively a symbols such as a frog, hedgehog or bulls head which she interpreted as being the uterus or fetus, as being symbols of "regeneration"Gimbutas, Marija (1991). The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. HarperSanFrancisco. p.223. , .
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In that case it would have been an Indo-European-speaking culture. Some aspects of Baalberge burials might support this theory, such as the presence of pottery allegedly influenced by the Baden culture (an Indo- Europeanised culture according to Gimbutas) and the Bodrogkersztúr culture and the posture of the corpses, laid on their right hand side with their legs pulled up - a posture typical of the "Yamna culture." But other aspects of the burials are very different from burials in the east, such as the placement of the hands over the mouth in an eating gesture (which is unknown in authentic kurgan sites) and the much less marked use of red ochre. In particular, there are no signs of the steppe kurgans that characterise the Kurgan culture.
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The 1st and 2nd century burials of this type, occurring all the way from Jutland to Lesser Poland, are referred to as princely graves Lubieszewo type, after Lubieszewo, Gryfice County in western Pomerania, where six such burials were found. Two types of 3rd- and 4th-century princely graves are distinguished: The Zakrzów type, named after the location of three very rich stone chamber burials found in Wrocław Zakrzów occur in southern Poland, while in the northern and central parts of the country the Rostołty (Białystok County) type kurgans are rather common. At some sites, believed to be dynastic necropolises, the princes were buried in generation long time increments. During the late Roman period the princely burials are fewer in number, but they get increasingly more elaborate.
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His "Anatolian hypothesis" posited that this group lived 2,000 years before the Kurgans, in Anatolia, later diffusing to Greece, then Italy, Sicily, Corsica, the Mediterranean coast of France, Spain, and Portugal. Another branch migrated along the fertile river valleys of the Danube and Rhine into central and northern Europe. He developed the Anatolian hypothesis, which argues that Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European languages, originated approximately 9,000 years ago in Anatolia and moved with the spread of farming throughout the Mediterranean and into central and northern Europe. This hypothesis contradicted Marija Gimbutas's Kurgan hypothesis, which states that Proto-Indo-European was spread by a migration of peoples from the Pontic-Caspian steppe approximately 6,000 years ago.
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Filipp Diomidovich Nefyodov (Филипп Диомидович Нефёдов, 18 October 1838 in Ivanovo, Vladimir Governorate, Russian Empire - 25 March 1902 in Vladimir Governorate, Russian Empire) was a Russian writer, journalist, editor (Remeslennaya Gazeta, 1875-1876; Russky Kurjer, 1879), ethnographer and archeologist who made hundreds of excavations in Povolzhye, Ural and West Siberia, studying ancient kurgans. Nefyodov have always sympathized with the Russian left radicalism; in March 1881, after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, he was arrested and briefly incarcerated for having links with Sophia Perovskaya and Andrei Zhelyabov. He is credited with being the first in Russia to publish the story of Salawat Yulayev, a legendary Bashkir rebel, whose name up until then it had been considered risky to mention. Nefyodov's critically acclaimed short story collection Na miru (На миру, Among People) came out in 1872.
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So, during excavations of the Tyutrinsky grave field near the village Suerka in 1981, Natalya and Alexander Matveevs found beads from blue spinel, which is produced only in Hindustan, Sri Lanka and Borneo, and also a miniature (less than 2 cm in length) faience amulet of Harpocrates (Hellenistic tradition of an image of the Ancient Egyptian god Horus). According to Alexander Matveev, the wealth of the Sargats' kurgans may indicate the Ingala Valley was a burial place of representatives of one or more Sargat "royal" families at the beginning of the Common Era, which had a source of enrichment from control of the supply of strategic goods along the Silk Road. A Sargat village discovered in the tract Copper Borok covers an area of 15.5 ha that makes it considered as a town.
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In Tuva’s capital city Kyzyl, Vainshtein worked as scientific director at the State Museum from 1950 to 1954, and following that period he was asked to work in the same capacity at the Tuvan Institute for History, Language and Literature. During this time he also met the Russian music pedagogue Alevtina (Alla) Petrova, who was teaching in Tuva the Russian classical music heritage, and the two got married in Kyzyl. Within this almost 10-year period, Vainshtein undertook wide-ranging ethnographic and archaeologic research in many parts of Tuva. Among these scientific endeavours, he visited and interviewed thousands of Tuvans and explored hundreds of important archaeological monuments, including kurgans of the ancient Scythian culture, all of which he thoroughly researched and described in Russian and international scientific publications.
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Slab Grave cultural monuments are found in northern, central and eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Northwest China (Xinjiang region, Qilian Mountains etc.), Manchuria, Lesser Khingan, Buryatia, southern Irkutsk Oblast and southern and central Zabaykalsky Krai. The name of the culture is derived from the main typology of the graves, its graves have rectangular fences (chereksurs) of vertically set slabs of gneiss or granite, with stone kurgans inside the fence. Were found settlements, burial and ritual structures, rock paintings, deer stones, and other remains of that culture. The most recent graves date from the 6th century BC, and the earliest monuments of the next in time Xiongnu culture belong to the 2nd century BC. The gap is not less than three centuries, and the monuments that would fill this chronological gap are almost unknown.
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In the early 1980s, a mainstream consensus had emerged among Indo-Europeanists in favour of the "Kurgan hypothesis" (named after the kurgans, burial mounds, of the Eurasian steppes) placing the Indo-European homeland in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of the Chalcolithic. This was not least due to the influence of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, edited by J. P. Mallory, that focused on the ideas of Marija Gimbutas and offered some improvements. Gimbutas had created a modern variation on the traditional invasion theory in which the Indo-Europeans were a nomadic tribe in Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia and expanded on horseback in several waves during the 3rd millennium BC. Their expansion coincided with the taming of the horse. Leaving archaeological signs of their presence (see Corded Ware culture), they subjugated the peaceful European Neolithic farmers of Gimbutas' Old Europe.
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Neolithic agricultural settlements (c. 5500–3500 BC), such as those at Norovlin, Tamsagbulag, Bayanzag, and Rashaan Khad, predated the introduction of horse-riding nomadism, a pivotal event in the history of Mongolia which became the dominant culture. Horse-riding nomadism has been documented by archeological evidence in Mongolia during the Copper and Bronze Age Afanasevo culture (3500–2500 BC); this culture was active to the Khangai Mountains in Central Mongolia. The wheeled vehicles found in the burials of the Afanasevans have been dated to before 2200 BC. Pastoral nomadism and metalworking became more developed with the later Okunev culture (2nd millennium BC), Andronovo culture (2300–1000 BC) and Karasuk culture (1500–300 BC), culminating with the Iron Age Xiongnu Empire in 209 BC. Monuments of the pre-Xiongnu Bronze Age include deer stones, keregsur kurgans, square slab tombs, and rock paintings.
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In 1956 Gimbutas introduced her Kurgan hypothesis, which combined archaeological study of the distinctive Kurgan burial mounds with linguistics to unravel some problems in the study of the Proto-Indo- European (PIE) speaking peoples, whom she dubbed the "Kurgans"; namely, to account for their origin and to trace their migrations into Europe. This hypothesis, and her method of bridging the disciplines, has had a significant impact on Indo-European studies. During the 1950s and early 1960s, Gimbutas earned a reputation as a world-class specialist on Bronze Age Europe, as well as on Lithuanian folk art and the prehistory of the Balts and Slavs, partly summed up in her definitive opus, Bronze Age Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe (1965). In her work she reinterpreted European prehistory in light of her backgrounds in linguistics, ethnology, and the history of religions, and challenged many traditional assumptions about the beginnings of European civilization.
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The Noin-Ula burial site' (, ', also Noyon Uul) consist of more than 200 large burial mounds, approximately square in plan, some 2 m in height, covering timber burial chambers. They are located by the Selenga River in the hills of northern Mongolia north of Ulan Bator in Batsumber sum of Tov Province. They were excavated in 1924–1925 by Pyotr Kozlov, who found them to be the tombs of the aristocracy of the Xiongnu; one is an exceptionally rich burial of a historically known ruler of the Xiongnu, Uchjulü-Jodi-Chanuy, who died in 13 CE. Most of the objects from Noin-Ula are now in the Hermitage Museum, while some artifacts unearthed later by Mongolian archaeologists are on display in the National Museum of Mongolian History, Ulan Bator. Two kurgans contained lacquer cups, inscribed with Chinese characters believed to be the names of Chinese craftsmen, and dated September 5 year of Tsian-ping era, i.e.
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The Ukok Plateau Polosmak and her team were guided by a border guard, Lt. Mikhail Chepanov, to a group of kurgans located in a strip of territory disputed between Russia and China. p. 95. A kurgan is a burial mound filled in with smaller sediment and covered with a pile of rocks; typically, the mound covered a tomb chamber, which contained a burial inside a log coffin, with accompanying grave goods. Such burial chambers were built from notched wood logs to form a small cabin, which may have resembled the semi-nomads’ winter shelters. The Ice Maiden's tomb chamber was constructed in this way, and the wood and other organic materials present have allowed her burial to be dated. A core sample from the logs of her chamber was analyzed by a dendrochronologist, and samples of organic matter from the horses’ stomachs were examined as well, indicating that the Ice Maiden was buried in the spring, at some point during the 5th century BC., p. 97.
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The Western Baltic Kurgans culture, which resulted from the interaction between groups arriving from the east and the people living in the Masuria-Sambia region (mid-1st millennium BCE) is discussed in the Bronze and Iron Age Poland article, within its time frame. The process of separation and differentiation of the eastern and western Baltic tribes deepened during the period of Roman influence, when the economy, culture, and customs of the Western Balts became increasingly influenced by the more highly developed Przeworsk and Wielbark cultures. From the beginning of the Common Era we can speak of the Western Balt culture, which included several distinct groups of the Western Baltic cultural circle and can definitely be connected with the Baltic peoples. Beginning in the 1st century CE, the Western Balts experienced their "golden" period — times of economic expansion and increased affluence of their societies, all of which was based on the amber trade, resulting in active and long-term contacts with the lands of the Roman Empire.
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Approximate culture extent 3300–2600 BC. The Yamnaya culture, also known as the Yamnaya Horizon, Yamna culture, Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Ямная (romanization: yamnaya) is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits (yama)', and these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. "Yamna" is the name that is derived from the same word in Ukrainian (ямна, romanization: yamna). The people of the Yamnaya culture were likely the result of a genetic admixture between the descendants of Eastern European Hunter-GatherersThe Eastern European hunter- gatherers were themselves mostly descended from ancient North Eurasians, related to the palaeolithic Mal'ta–Buret' culture. and people related to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus.
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The Slab Grave culture of the late Bronze and early Iron Age, related to the proto-Mongols, spread over Northern, Central and Eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Northwest China (Xinjiang, Qilian Mountains etc.), Manchuria, Lesser Khingan, Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast and Zabaykalsky Krai. Tumen D., "Anthropology of Archaeological Populations from Northeast Asia " (PDF) pages 25, 27 This culture is the main archaeological find of the Bronze Age Mongolia. The geographic area the Slab Grave culture covered Deer stones (also known as reindeer stones) and the omnipresent kheregsüürs (small kurgans) probably are from this era; other theories date the deer stones as 7th or 8th centuries BC. Deer stones are ancient megaliths carved with symbols that can be found all over central and eastern Eurasia but are concentrated largely in Siberia and Mongolia. Most deer stones occur in association with ancient graves; it is believed that stones are the guardians of the dead. There are around 700 deer stones known in Mongolia of a total of 900 deer stones that have been found in Central Asia and South Siberia.
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It is almost universally agreed among scholars that the Andronovo culture was Indo-Iranian; it is furthermore credited with the invention of the spoke-wheeled chariot around 2000 BC. The association between the Andronovo culture and the Indo-Iranians is corroborated by the distribution of Iranian place-names across the Andronovo horizon and by the historical evidence of dominance by various Iranian peoples, including Saka (Scythians), Sarmatians and Alans, throughout the Andronovo horizon during the 1st millennium BC. Sintashta on the upper Ural River, noted for its chariot burials and kurgans containing horse burials, is considered the type site of the Sintashta culture, forming one of the earliest parts of the "Andronovo horizon". It is conjectured that the language spoken was still in the Proto-Indo-Iranian stage.: "The settlement and cemetery of Sintashta, for example, though located far to the north on the Trans-Ural steppe, provides the type of Indo-Iranian archaeological evidence that would more than delight an archaeologist seeking their remains in Iran or India." Comparisons between the archaeological evidence of the Andronovo and textual evidence of Indo-Iranians (i. e.
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