Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

scythians in central asia
by several layers of larch logs which would have made it difficult for grave robbers to
get through to the chamber. The earth removed when the pit had been dug was then
piled up over the graves and was covered by a thick layer of large stones creating a
burial mound. At Pazyryk the largest is 5 m high and 60 m in diameter. The cemetery
contained six kurgans more than 15 m in diameter and a number of much smaller
ones that tend to cluster around the larger mounds.
The remarkable preservation of the buried remains is due largely to the loose rubble
piled up to form the kurgans. This facilitated a free flow of air, and as the temperature
dropped, warm air from the grave pit rose to be replaced by inflowing cold
air. This lowered the temperature sufficient to freeze what water remained, thus
preventing the organic materials from rotting. As the winter progressed the ground
froze to the depth of many metres. In spring the frozen ground began to thaw out but
the kurgan mound provided a protective blanket ensuring that the ground beneath
it remained well below freezing point. In these icy conditions, without oxygen, the
organic material remained intact preserved as if in a deep freeze. So it is that the
wood, herbs, leather, fur, and fabrics, together with human bodies, packed with vegetation
after embalming and with skin tattooed, remained for the astonished archaeologists
to recover.
There has been much debate concerning the dates of the Pazyryk burials. It was
originally thought that they spread from the fifth to third centuries but a series of
recent radiocarbon data has provided a more precise date range. Kurgan 2, which
is generally regarded as the earliest, has been dated to the first decade of the third
century while kurgan 5, thought to be the latest, dates to the third quarter of the
third century. These dates are independently supported by dendrochronology which
suggests that the timbers for kurgan 5 were cut about 50 years after those used in
kurgan 2.
The cemetery of Berel lies on the western edge of the Altai on a terrace of the River
Bukhtarma, a tributary of the Irtysh. The excavation of kurgan 1 by Radlov in 1865
showed that permafrost conditions had preserved organic materials but lack of conservation
expertise meant that little survived after the graves had been opened. A
new programme of work, beginning in 1998, has examined twenty-four kurgans,
mostly dating to the Iron Age, showing them to have been of the same general struc-
7.18 (Opposite top) Diagrammatic representation of kurgan 10 at Berel, Kazakhstan.
7.19 (Opposite bottom) Kurgan 10 at Berel during excavation showing the state of the burial before the pit
was refilled. The timber grave chamber and the bodies of the ten horses buried next to it were covered
with sheets of birch bark. The roughly circular hole cut by the grave robbers can be seen in the centre.
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