Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

scythians in central asia
7.20 Reconstruction of how the burials in kurgan 10 at Berel would have looked before the last covering
of birch bark sheets was placed over the bodies of the dead horses.
ture as those excavated at Pazyryk, with timber-built burial chambers set in pits
beneath mounds of loosely packed stone rubble. In some cases (kurgans 10 and 11)
the burial chambers were built of thick, carefully trimmed planks slotted together,
while in the case of kurgan 36 stone slabs had been used to build the walls. Where
horses accompanied the dead they were always placed within the northern part of
the grave pit but outside the burial chamber. Numbers vary from one to seventeen.
Where many were included in a single grave they were buried in layers separated by
sheets of birch bark. In all, more than eighty horses have been found, all stallions.
In most cases the horses were equipped with their full ceremonial tack. The burial
chambers had all been robbed in antiquity but the artefacts remaining are closely
comparable to those found at Pazyryk, including different kinds of animals carved
192