Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

discovering the scythians
N
Ural Mts
Astana
cemeteries
modern city
FILIPPOVKA
Ural
Aqtobe
Aral
Sea
K a r a
Syr Dar’ya
t a u M t
s
Tashkent
Lake
Balkhash
Almaty
Ili
ISSYK
T i a n
D z h u n g a r M t
I
l i
V a l l e y
S h a n M t s
s
Tasim
C a
Basin
s p i a n S e a
Amu Dar’ya
PERSIAN EMPIRE
c.500 BC
Dushanbe
Ashgabat
0 250 miles
0 250km
1.19 The map of the Central Asian steppe showing the expanse of the open steppe (in green) and some of
the more significant Scythian burials.
The Issyk burial is not alone. It lies in a region of particularly rich pasture—
the Semireče (Seven-River region) between the Tian Shan Mountains and Lake
Balkhash—where kurgans proliferate. They have been the subject of a systematic
programme of excavation but most had been robbed in antiquity. The concentration
of kurgans does, however, show that the Semireče was a centre of nomad power in
the second half of the first millennium bc.
A second region with an unusual concentration of kurgan burials lies at the
southern end of the Ural Mountains between the Ural River and its tributary, the
Ilek. This is the vital corridor linking the Pontic steppe and the Kazakh steppe where
the grassland narrows between the southern end of the Urals and the desert region
around the Caspian. Among the many cemeteries examined by both Russian and
Kazakh workers, that of Filippovka in the Orenburg region, stands out. Excavations
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