New finds of the horse harness elements of the Turkic period from Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

The paper presents new finds of the horse harness elements of the Turkic period from Kyrgyzstan. The finds consist of: a pair of antler cheekpieces, bridle fragments, a wooden saddle frame, and four iron stirrups. They come from tombs with human-horse burials at the Boz-Adyr medieval cemetery, and a memorial enclosure at Kosh-Dobo in the Ysyk-Kol depression. One stirrup is a stray find from Chui valley. All finds represent widespread, «classical» items of Turkic period archaeology. They display extensive analogies with materials from burial and memorial complexes of the early Middle Ages in the Tien Shan, Altai, Tyva and Mongolia, i.e. from core Turkic cultural regions. However, most of these types of horse harness artifacts were used up to the end of the 1st millennium ACE. Based on comparative analyses, and taking into account their archaeological context, the horse harness artifacts can be dated to the VII–IX centuries ACE. Despite the fact that all items generally repeat known forms, some of them are quite unique in a number of details, which, in our opinion, is natural in handicraft production. The new materials significantly expand our understanding of the horse harness used by the Kyrgyzstan population in the early Middle Ages. The archaeological context of the discoveries suggests that their manufacturers and/or users were Turkic tribes during the Western Turkic and Turgesh Khaganates.