Excavations were carried out in the Kyz-Aul necropolis, which experts call a multi-storey cemetery.
Russian archeology during excavations on the Kerch Peninsula in Crimea discovered a mass grave of people from the times of the Khazar Kaganate - a medieval state created by a nomadic people - the Khazars. This was announced on Thursday by the Archeology Foundation, with the assistance of which the excavations are being carried out.
“At one of the sites of the necropolis [Kyz-Aul, where excavations are underway], a mass grave of people was discovered literally piled up. Some of them were lying in unnatural positions. So, for example, one of the deceased seemed to press his hands to his head. Those who cleaned his skeleton got the impression that the unfortunate man was simply buried alive and he tried to somehow cover his face before dying, "the words of Oleg Markov, Development Director of the Archeology Foundation, are quoted in the message.
In total, more than ten such skeletons have been found, and this is only in a small area of the excavation, noted the director of development of the fund. “The skulls are badly damaged and it is impossible to understand whether they had any lifetime injuries or not. Anthropologists have to deal with this already. Maybe they were the victims of some kind of massacre, or maybe people who died during the epidemic,”Markov said.
So far, only one thing is clear to archaeologists: "their death occurred at the same time and they did not stand on ceremony with their bodies." “They just dumped it in one heap. At the same time, they did not put any accompanying burial equipment at all? Scientists still hope to solve this terrible problem. One thing is clear, we have before us another tragic story that happened in the Crimea in the early Middle Ages,”added Markov.
The necropolis Kyz-Aul, where excavations are underway, are called by archaeologists a "multi-storey cemetery," the fund said. The first burials appeared on it in antiquity and were represented by monumental crypts and graves in the form of stone boxes. On the second "floor", in the Middle Ages, representatives of the so-called Saltovo-Mayatsk culture, which scientists associate with the inhabitants of the Khazar Kaganate, began to bury their dead on it.
The Khazar Kaganate existed in 650-969. AD and controlled the territory of the Ciscaucasia, the Lower and Middle Volga regions, modern North-Western Kazakhstan, the Azov region, the eastern part of the Crimea, as well as the steppe and forest-steppe of Eastern Europe up to the Dnieper.