Burials of the Bronze Age from the Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say Burial Mounds

Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say Burial Mounds in the Talas Valley

The systematic study of Bronze Age monuments in Kyrgyzstan is associated with the work of Alexander Natanovich Bernshtein in the late 1930s to early 1960s. He initiated the accumulation of material and its scientific interpretation. Archaeological supervision along the route of the Great Chui Canal in the early 1940s allowed him to make an important historical conclusion that "based on the development of the economy of pastoralist cattle breeders of the Bronze Age, societies of early nomads of Semirechye, including Northern Kyrgyzstan, were formed," a conclusion that was fully confirmed by research in the 1960s to 1980s.

This article introduces unpublished materials from the Bronze Age burial mounds of Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say into scientific circulation. In 1956-1967 and 1960, a team of archaeologists from the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR conducted extensive work on studying the antiquities of the Talas Valley. The results were published in a special collection. Among the studied were also Bronze Age burials. The main part of them entered scientific literature back in 1960, except for the objects of the Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say burial mounds.

The Kulan-Say burial mound is located at the entrance to the gorge of the same name, 10 km north of the city of Talas. In 1960, it included more than 100 mounds of various periods with stone-earth embankments. In the same year, Bronze Age burials were uncovered here, located in the southern and northern parts of the burial mound.

Burial No. 3 is a rectangular stone enclosure, three sides of which (north, east, and south) are made of large and small stones laid flat. The length of the northern side is 2.70 m, the eastern side is 2.74 m, and the southern side is 3.0 m.

The western side of the enclosure has not survived (or it was not there).

In the center of the enclosure, a burial pit of rectangular shape was uncovered, oriented with its long axis along the east-west line. Its dimensions are 1.70 x 1.10 m, and the depth is 1.60-1.86 m. The western wall and the western ends of the northern and southern walls were faced with large (1.16-1.40 m) flat vertically placed slabs combined with horizontally laid smaller flat stones. The grave contained no finds.

Burial No. 4 is located at the northern end of the burial mound on the edge of the foothill terrace. On the surface, arrangements of elongated stones (ranging from 0.50 to 1.25 - 1.30 m in length) were visible. During the clearing, five pits of different sizes and depths were uncovered. In the western half is pit No. 5. It is rectangular in shape, oriented with its long axis along the north-south line. Its dimensions are 2.75 x 2.20 m, and the depth is 0.45 m. To the southeast of it, pit No. 4 was uncovered - square in shape, measuring 1.60 x 1.40 m, and 0.60 m deep. In the eastern half, three pits were cleared: No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3. Pit No. 1 measures 1.40 x 1.00 m, with a depth of 0.90 m, oriented with its long axis along the east-west line. All four walls retained vertically placed flat slabs of stone facing. In the northwestern part of the pit, scattered human bones were found, and in the northeastern and southwestern corners stood one pot-shaped vessel each. No other finds were present. Pit No. 2 is located 0.45 m southeast of the first. It had a rectangular shape (2.80 x 0.50 - 0.70 m, depth 0.76 m), oriented with its long axis along the east-west line. There were no finds.

The Kyzyl-Say burial mound is located 15 km south of the city of Talas on a small terrace in the same-named area. In 1960, it included 20 burials of different periods; Saka-Usun mounds, underburials, and Bronze Age burials were uncovered here.

The Bronze Age burials (mound No. 16) represent a structure formed by ten stone enclosures of various sizes and shapes, built close to each other from flat-laid stones.

The central enclosure is rectangular in shape, oriented with its sides towards the cardinal directions. The stone facing has survived on three sides - northern, eastern, and southern - measuring 3.05 x 4.80 x 3.0 m. In the center of this enclosure, two burial pits (No. 2 and No. 3) were uncovered; the dimensions of the northern pit (No. 2) are 1.60 x 0.96 m, with a depth of 1.30 m; the southern pit (No. 3) measures 1.70 x 1.0 m, with a depth of 1.10 m. The pits are located 1.10 m apart, oriented with their long axes along the east-west line. The bottom and walls are earthen.

In burial pit No. 2, in the northern half, scattered bones of a human skeleton were found at the bottom.

There is no burial inventory.

To the north side of the central enclosure, there is a small addition (No. 1) of oval shape, measuring 3.70 x 2.60 m. At a distance of 0.35 m from its southern side, a burial pit measuring 1.40 x 1.0 m, with a depth of 1.12 m, was uncovered, elongated with its long axis along the east-west line. The bottom and walls are earthen. In the northwestern half, the bones of a human skeleton lay in disarray.

On the eastern side, three additional structures (No. 4, 5, 6) adjoin the central enclosure and its northern addition.

The eastern side of the enclosure and part of the facing of its northern addition are simultaneously the western side of additions No. 4, 5, and 6. The northern side of addition No. 6 is the southern side of addition No. 4. The additions are oval in shape. Judging by the outlines of the stone masonry of their walls, it can be assumed that addition No. 6 was built first, followed by No. 5 and then No. 4.

Addition No. 4 has dimensions: along the north-south line - 2.60 m, along the east-west line - 3.30 m. At a distance of 0.44 m from its western wall, an earthen burial pit measuring 0.92 x 1.30 m, with a depth of 1 m, was uncovered, oriented with its long axis along the east-west line. In the center of the northern half, scattered bones of a human skeleton were found. No other finds were present.

To the south side of the central enclosure and addition No. 6, there is an oval addition No. 7. Its masonry has survived only on the southeastern side. Its dimensions, along the east-west line - 2.10 m, along the north-south line - 1.20 m. In its center, a depression measuring 1.60 x 0.40 m, with a depth of 0.76 m, was uncovered, oriented with its long axis along the east-west line. In the eastern half, closer to the center, there was a pot-shaped vessel.

To the south side of addition No. 7, there is a small addition No. 10. Its masonry has survived only on the southeastern side, with a chamber measuring 1.60 x 1 m. In its center, a pit was uncovered, elongated with its long axis along the east-west line, measuring 0.60 x 1 m, with a depth of 0.60 m.

To the eastern side of addition No. 6, there is an oval addition No. 3, measuring 1.60 x 1.66 m. In its center, a pit measuring 1.10 x 0.82 m, with a depth of 1.10 m, was uncovered, oriented with its long axis along the northeast-southwest line.

To the southeast side, additions No. 7, 8, and 10 are adjoined by addition No. 9, measuring 2.90 x 2.30 m. In its center, a pit measuring 1.10 x 0.60 m, with a depth of 0.85 m, was uncovered, oriented with its long axis along the east-west line.

The described burial structures of both burial mounds have much in common in the shape and masonry of above-ground structures (stones laid flat, selected by size and fitted to each other), the arrangement of burial pits (all earthen, except for two), their orientation (long axis along the east-west line), burial ritual (the body placement in the northern and northwestern halves of the pit), and the placement of burial inventory (vessels with food in the southern and southeastern parts of the grave).

The enclosures with additions No. 4 in Kulan-Say and No. 16 in Kyzyl-Say are family cemeteries. Judging by the sizes and depths of the cleared pits, some of them were burial structures, while others were apparently for ritual food. Among the burial pits where no remains of the buried were found, we can include pits No. 2 and No. 3 of burial No. 4 in Kulan-Say and the pits in additions No. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 of burial No. 16 in Kyzyl-Say.

Some of these pits, differing in small sizes, could contain children's burials. The poverty of burial inventory and the disordered position of the bones of the buried can likely be explained by looting.

The Bronze Age burials in Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say typologically belong to the same group as the Bronze Age burials of the Talas Valley in Tash-Tebe and Tash-Bashat. The technique of constructing above-ground stone masonry in Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say is similar to that in the burials of the Tash-Tyube II burial mounds and Tash-Bashat (mounds No. 50-51); enclosure No. 37 in Tash-Tyube II is also built like burial No. 3 in Kulan-Say: from stones of equal size, among which many are large (up to 0.85 m) and some are placed vertically. The rectangular shape of the enclosures, like No. 3 in Kulan-Say and the central enclosure of burial No. 16 in Kyzyl-Say, is characteristic of most burials in Tash-Tyube II, where adjoining burials, including round shapes and small sizes, have been identified, as in Kyzyl-Say.

There is also a similarity in the orientation of the enclosures of Kulan-Say and the central enclosure of Kyzyl-Say along the north-south line with the enclosures in Tash-Bashat and the two sections in Tash-Tyube II. The sizes of the burial pits and the burial ritual (body placement is recorded in several enclosures of Tash-Tyube II and Tash-Bashat) approximately coincide.

The burials in Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say have analogies in other regions of Kyrgyzstan. In terms of the shape of the enclosures (rectangular, round, oval, adjoining each other), the techniques of masonry and facing of hundreds of graves with stone (vertical and horizontal masonry) or wood, the sizes of the enclosures and some graves, the number of additions to the main enclosures, the orientation of the enclosures and graves in the landscape, the burial ritual (body placement), and ritual vessels (pot-shaped, molded, asymmetrical, without ornamentation, small size), they are most similar to the burials in the Ketmen-Tyube and high-altitude Arpin valleys. This type of burial is also known in the Chui Valley. Based on the analogies, the monuments of this type are preliminarily dated to the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

The ceramic vessels from Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say in terms of shape and size are closest to the vessels from the Jaz-Kechu burial mound and the Jal-Aryk settlement in Ketmen-Tyube.

The structures of the burial facilities in Kyzyl-Say and Kulan-Say can also be compared with a number of other monuments outside Kyrgyzstan; for example, the Fergana burials of the late Bronze Age in the Arisif, Vuadily, and Dakhani burial mounds have a number of similar features, manifested in the techniques of vertical and horizontal stone facing of the walls of the graves, the orientation along the east-west line of some enclosures and burial pits, the sizes and depths, and the group concentration of burials, but overall, the Fergana burial mounds are still quite individual.

The comparison of burial structures and inventory of the burials in Kulan-Say and Kyzyl-Say with similar monuments in Kyrgyzstan and the Fergana Valley as a whole allows for a preliminary dating of them to the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

On this basis, it can also be concluded that the territory of the Talas Valley at the end of the Bronze Age was widely settled by pastoral-agricultural tribes, closely related in terms of economy and material culture to the population of the late Bronze Age of the steppe zone of the Alexeyev-Sargarin type. The natural conditions of the valley (abundance of water, pasture lands suitable for agriculture, river valleys) allowed them to engage in a characteristic for this population complex type of economy with a predominance of migratory animal husbandry. The very topography of the surveyed burial mounds supports this assumption - they are located not in the central, flat part of the valley, but on sites adjacent to mountain gorges, on elevated foothill areas and mountain slopes. Based on the analogies presented above, it can be said that the tribes living here in the late Bronze Age were part of a vast array of pastoral-agricultural tribes, having their own specifics on the southern edge of the range, significantly different from other tribes living in the territory of present-day Kazakhstan, the Tashkent oasis, and the Fergana Valley.

History and Archaeology of Ancient Tien Shan