Excavations in the Territory of the Inner Tian Shan

Plan of the Djapyrik Burial Ground

As a result of excavations at the Basqiya II and Keden burial grounds, we have identified another type of mound not noted by L.N. Bernshatam for Tien Shan, but widely spread in other regions of Kyrgyzstan.

This is an earthen mound almost devoid of stones on the surface, sometimes reaching heights of up to 1.5-2 m, and in these cases with internal stone linings in one or two layers.

In general, all known burial mounds of Tien Shan can be classified as follows:
1. Earthen mounds without stones, in some cases with circular stone arrangements.
2. Earthen mounds with a slight stone scatter on the surface.
3. Mounds with a dense stone covering on the surface and sometimes with circular stone arrangements.
4. Stone-earth mounds.
5. Stone arrangements of various shapes: rectangular, rhombic, circular.
6. Stone mounds, sometimes with circular arrangements around the base or concentric circles.

In one burial ground, two, three, or four types of mounds are often found, sometimes with one type predominating.

The type of burial structure under all varieties of mounds of medium and small sizes is only an earthen grave of oval or rectangular shape. For the burial mounds of Tien Shan, a shallow, relatively narrow pit is characteristic, often very cramped for the buried. The position of the bones indicates that the deceased lay tightly against the walls of the pit, especially in the chest area.

Pit sizes: length from 1.60 to 2.40 m, width from 0.40 to 0.80 m, depth from 0.30 to 0.80 m. Very rarely, large pits were up to 1-1.30 m wide and 1-2 m deep. The predominant orientation of burial pits is from west to east - over 50% of all graves; directions from northwest to southeast and from southwest to northeast are also common: a direction from north to south is encountered.

Burial pits were filled with earth interspersed with small and large stones. It is possible that most of them had wooden coverings, but traces of these were not always preserved. They have been traced under large earthen mounds with internal stone linings at the Basqiya II and Keden burial grounds, as well as under some stone and stone-earth mounds from the excavations of A.N. Bernshatam and A.K. Kibiriev.

Some graves had coverings made of large sandstone slabs (sizes: 1.33 x 0.60; 1.05 x 0.75; 0.80 x 0.35, etc., thickness 0.10-0.15 m). The slabs were laid across the pit, from two to six pieces above each. Sometimes the slabs only covered the outline of the grave, so it is unclear how they were secured above the pits. In this case, the grave of mound 44 of the Alamyshyk burial ground, excavated by A.N. Bernshatam, is of interest. The grave was initially covered with wooden beams, then with stone slabs. Above some graves, under a low, often stone scatter or stone rings, there were stone arrangements that repeated the outlines of the graves. Sometimes stones were marked throughout the depth of the pit.

No patterns have been traced in the combination of certain types of above-ground parts of mounds with a specific type of covering. Thus, wooden and slab coverings are found under earthen, sometimes with a shell, stone-earth, and stone mounds.

It has been noted that the burial pits in Tien Shan differ in their narrow dimensions, and for placing burial inventory, in particular clay vessels, special recesses - niches were made in the northern wall of the pit. In them, vessels stood close to each other, sometimes slightly protruding into the pit, and in some cases even on the bones of the left hand of the buried, as we have traced, for example, in the mounds of the Keden burial ground. Niches were present in graves both with wooden or slab coverings and without coverings and under any of the identified types of mounds.

It should be noted that for the first time in the territory of Inner Tien Shan, during the last two seasons (1988-1989), eight large mounds were excavated in the Keden burial ground. These mounds provided an opportunity to judge the features of construction and burial rites in "royal-type" mounds. These large mounds are conditionally referred to as "royal." Their diameters are relatively small - 20-30 m, and the height of the mounds is 2-3 m. However, against the background of other mounds of the Keden burial ground and Tien Shan as a whole, these mounds appear very impressive. The internal burial structures, the burial rite, and the finds (although not significant) do not contradict classifying these mounds as belonging to the royal type.

In all eight mounds, burials were made in spacious, but relatively low wooden (juniper) log cabins, lowered into the burial pit. The cabins had coverings made of the same logs as the walls. In some places, the walls, corner posts, and coverings were well preserved, allowing for a reliable reconstruction of their original appearance. Attention is drawn to the relatively low height of the walls of the cabins - 1-1.20 m (in two cases up to 2 m) with quite large lengths (2.8-3.7 m) and widths (2-3.5 m) of the walls. Possibly due to this, on the eastern side of the cabins, there was an entrance of the dromos type, which began not at the level of the bottom of the cabin, but significantly higher, closer to the upper edge of the cabins, and sloped upwards. Such entrances have been noted in three mounds (No. 62, 65, 66). They may have been present in other cabins, but their presence could not be traced here. The dromos entrances, 0.60-0.70 m wide, were filled with stones.

Above the cabins, on top of the wooden covering, stones or boulders 1-2 m high were thrown, followed by a layer of earth 1-1.5 m thick, which was tightly surrounded by a stone shell in one or two layers of stones. On top of the shell, more earth was piled to a height of 1-1.2 m, which was also reinforced with a shell. From the second shell, only the side parts are most often preserved now; the middle has either collapsed inward or been disturbed due to gradual subsidence and lowering of the height of the mound.

Despite the looting of all mounds, both large and small, a unified burial rite can be traced. The buried were mainly solitary, lying in an extended position, on their backs, with their heads to the west when the graves were oriented from west to east, and with their heads to the north when the burial pits were oriented from north to south. An exception is made for five mounds (one in Basqiya, four in Keden), where paired burials of men and women were found in the pits. In two cases (mounds No. 9, 14 of the Keden burial ground), the buried were in a crouched position.
It is interesting to note the fact we traced in the Keden burial ground of the absence of skulls in some cases. Where burials were disturbed and the remains of skeletons were in disarray, the absence of skulls did not raise special doubts, as other bones were also absent (traced in 9 cases). But sometimes (11 cases), the skeletons of the buried were in anatomical order, yet the skulls were missing. The same was traced in one of the paired burials (mound No. 41), where both skulls were absent while the bones were intact.

At this stage of the research, we cannot provide a proper explanation for this fact. Perhaps the impetus for searching for the solution to this mystery will be the paired burial in K-37, where the skeletons of the buried were in anatomical order, and the skulls were lying some distance away from them. Four to five cervical vertebrae were found with the skulls, which suggests artificial separation of the skulls from the skeleton. The mystery lies in the timing; when this was done - during the burial or later, during the robbery.

The inventory from the burials of Tien Shan is scarce. As everywhere, the basis consists of clay vessels. In the graves, there were from one to eight vessels. These include round-bottomed and flat-bottomed bowls, jugs, pots, and dishes of various shapes, which find broad analogies in the ceramic material of the early nomads of Tien Shan, Ketmen-Tyube, Talas and Chui valleys, and adjacent regions of Kyrgyzstan. There are single examples of vessels of special shapes. The typological combination of vessels in the graves is very diverse. However, for the Keden burial ground, a frequent combination of identical forms was observed, i.e., there were two or three vessels that were completely identical in shape and size.

All vessels are hand-shaped; no wheel-thrown ones were found, but there are ornamented and painted forms.

We have also identified a feature of the burial rite for the mounds of Tien Shan, such as the production of special vessels (ritual) for placement in burials. They are distinguished by their very miniature forms.

They are often made roughly and carelessly, almost not subjected to firing, but sometimes painted. In the grave, either only ritual vessels or only ordinary vessels of natural sizes, used in everyday life, were placed, but they almost never combined them.

The burial ground of Basqiya I stands out for the positioning of vessels, not only from the general mass of burial mounds of Tien Shan but also from all regions of Kyrgyzstan. The entire ceramic collection of the burial ground consisted of miniature forms like small cups or bowls of gray color, unburned. They were not placed in the pit or niche but on the edge of the graves or on high steps on the northern side, in groups of 3, 4, or 5 specimens. This arrangement of vessels has not been noted anywhere else in Kyrgyzstan, but it is found in the mounds of Fergana.

Other household items are represented by fragments of iron knives, rarely whole forms. There are spindle whorls, weights, items made of paste, etc. More numerous are items of adornment: beads, earrings, buckles, amulets. Among the beads, there are carnelian ones, inlaid with white paste, which is usually characteristic of Saka burials. Interesting are the gold earrings made of thin wire and hollow with stone inlays. Various gold buckles found in the log cabins of large mounds of the Keden burial ground deserve special interest. These are small round hemispherical, star-shaped, ribbed, figurative, and other buckles. In shape and style of manufacture, they are similar to the sewn gold buckles on the coat from the "Issyk" mound and finds near Lake Barskoon on Issyk-Kul.

Among them are figurines of animal heads made of thin gold leaf.

Particular interest is represented by bronze arrowheads; triangular with downward spikes and a hidden socket, triangular tang, and three-bladed (with a split socket). The last two types can be dated to the 7th-6th (5th) centuries BC by analogy with other similar arrowheads found in the territory of Semirechye, Fergana, Pamir-Alai, and Ketmen-Tyube. The first type, the socketed triangular, can be dated no earlier than the 5th century BC, most likely the late 5th - 6th centuries BC, considering its small size. In Central Asian archaeology, it is accepted that this type of arrowheads appears in the 7th century BC and persists until the 4th-3rd centuries BC.

A group of bronze horse harness items deserves attention. Here we should stop at the items found by A.N. Bernshatam, which are of random origin from the Naryn region. But their more precise location, time, and authorship of the finds are unknown. These quite interesting and valuable finds received only a brief mention in one of A.N. Bernshatam's articles and a reflection in a summary table in another of his works without information about the circumstances of their discovery and a more detailed interpretation. After that, it seems they fell out of the researchers' sight. These unaccompanied items were recently accidentally rediscovered in the old collections of the historical museum and attracted our attention. This complex consists of a pair of bits, a pair of spring buckles, a hemispherical buckle, and a surmetash. A.N. Bernshatam attributed these items to the 8th-6th centuries BC. As is known, bits with stirrup-shaped ends and with a hole, like our specimen, are widely known and currently dated to the 8th-7th centuries BC, while in the 6th century BC, they were already replaced by other types.

The spring buckles, grooved, oval-shaped, with a trapezoidal frame on the side, also have a wide range of analogies throughout the Eurasian steppe. However, researchers have already noted that the regions of their greatest distribution are Kazakhstan, Altai, Southern Siberia, where they existed both in the early and developed Scytho-Saka period, undergoing slight changes. But the large size of our buckles and the shape of the button-like prong allow us to classify them as early specimens. Thus, if we assume that all four items were found together and constitute one complex, the acceptable date for it would be the late 8th - 7th centuries BC, making it the earliest complex of items for the territory of Tien Shan.

In mound No. 68 of the Keden burial ground, we also found two buckles from a horse bridle. One of them is hemispherical but with four facets and a bridge on the inner part. The second is rectangular, in the form of a sleeve with a slot on one side and an oval hole on the other. They can be dated to the 6th-4th (3rd) centuries BC.

One of the significant components of the accompanying inventory of the mounds of Tien Shan is animal bones, mainly from sheep. Animal bones were found next to the vessels or in them and are exclusively represented by the tail part: sacrum with two or three vertebrae, often in articulation. Even in the large mounds of the Keden burial ground, only the sacra of large animals: cows, horses were found. This can be said to be one of the features of the burial rite of the mounds of Tien Shan.

Thus, even a brief overview of the material considered indicates the uniqueness and diversity of the culture of the early nomads of Tien Shan in all its components, burial structures and rites, material culture, etc.

The territory of Tien Shan, with its highly rugged terrain on one hand, and the presence of spacious and beautiful pastures on the other, allowed the population of Tien Shan to migrate to distant territories and maintain connections with their immediate neighbors - the population of the Issyk-Kul basin, further Semirechye, and possibly even more distant northeastern regions, which determined such a uniqueness of the semi-nomadic culture of Tien Shan.

History and Archaeology of Ancient Tien Shan