Burial of the Pazyryk Elite Members at Khankarinsky Dol, Northwestern Altai

Abstract

This article presents the results of an interdisciplinary study of kurgan 30 at Khankarinsky Dol, located on the left bank of the Inya River, 1–1.5 km southeast of Chineta, Krasnoshchekovsky District, Altai Territory (northwestern Altai). This is a Pazyryk kurgan, under which a looted double burial of a male and an adolescent was found. Their heads were apparently oriented toward the east. Along the northern wall of the grave, an accompanying burial of seven horses was found, placed in two rows, heads oriented to the east. The morphological analysis showed all of them to be stallions, resembling those from other mounds of this group. Morphological comparison with horses from other Pazyryk kurgans in the Altai revealed both similarities and differences. Analysis of the grave goods, including iron bits, a bone pipe-shaped bead, tiny bronze daggers in wooden scabbards, a pickaxe, numerous fragments of gold foil from the horse harness, and fragments of Chinese wooden lacquer ware, suggests that the burial was made no earlier than the 4th century BC – possibly in the late 4th to early 3rd century BC. Radiocarbon analysis was carried out at the Tomsk Institute for Monitoring Climatic and Ecological Systems of the SB RAS Center for Isotopic Studies. The funerary rite and the artifacts suggest that kurgan 30 was constructed for members of the nomadic elite of the northwestern Altai.