For the second season, Chelyabinsk archaeologists are exploring burials in neighboring Bashkiria made by tribes that made up monuments of the 18th-17th centuries BC. This time is synchronous with Arkaim. The head of the expedition, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of SUSU, Alexander Tairov, is sure that these days evidence of the community and differences of cultures of those who lived thousands of years ago in the territory of the modern South Urals and the neighboring republic were found.
Error - no more than a meter
So, the excavation site is the southwest of Bashkiria, on the border with the Orenburg region, Miyakinsky district, the village of Shatman Tamak, which, by the way, is 250 years old.
Tairov-Alexander-Dmitrievich- (color), - SUSU.jpg- We were contacted by local ethnographers who were interested in studying their area, says Alexander Tairov. - Local businessman Ilgiz Yagudin sponsored our expedition.
The burial ground consisted of four mounds. In the fall of last year, we excavated one mound of this burial ground, which turned out to be very much plowed up. In Soviet times, these lands were used for sowing sugar beets, and the plowing was very deep, up to half a meter! A second mound was found this season.
Knowing the distance between the already explored mounds, archaeologists geometrically calculated the location of the third one and hit just the edge of the stone structure. If they made a mistake even by a meter, they would have passed by the sensational find!
The dimensions of the first mound are 32 by 32 meters, the second and third - 12 by 12 meters. All three kurgans were built at about the same time - in the Bronze Age, this is the middle of the second millennium BC. And all - with a stone ring. And the funeral rite in all the kurgans was approximately the same.
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Ancient mausoleum
“Actually, this is not a ring,” Tairov says. - The mound was completely surrounded by a stone shell, like a mausoleum, for better preservation of the soil. The most interesting thing is that the masonry is in the form of scales, but not in a traditional cascade, but by the imposition of stones “on the contrary”: the falling raindrops did not roll down, but fell inside, which created the necessary moisture inside the building. At a later time, when the mounds were already plundered, the upper part was destroyed …
When plowing began from above, the stones were constantly turned inside out. Even the locals themselves told how solid stones were removed from these places with carts. The tile was excellent! Already in our time it was used in their farms, for filling ravines, for paving roads. And to this day, these gravestones are no-no and can be found on the surrounding roads.
The stones from this quarry, which is located half a kilometer from the village, have been used since the beginning of the first millennium of our era. The residents of the future village of Shatman Tamak, who came several centuries ago, also mined stone for the foundations of their houses in the same quarry, which ceased to be developed in the 80s of the last century and turned into a rural dump.
Pots from friends?
In this field season, a central burial was examined in a large mound, which also turned out to be plundered. In a lateral burial, in a large grave pit, a man was buried in the supine position with bent legs. It's hard to tell from the bones, but most likely it was a man. Nearby lay a ceramic vessel with an ornament. In the second mound there are two more burials, one of which is from the late Sarmatian period, the other from the early Middle Ages. Three more grave pits were found under the stone fence. One burial - a paired children's (the deceased was no more than five years old), one - an adult, another - a teenager.
It is noteworthy that next to the children's graves there were also children's pots. Maybe they were made by the dead themselves during their lifetime? Or maybe their peer friends? Be that as it may, but in contrast to the burials of adults, where there is very high-quality ceramics, ceramics in children's burials are poorly fired, and therefore of very poor preservation. The impression is that it was prepared specifically for burials, not caring at all about technology or about its good appearance.
And the spirits will protect us
And yet, let's understand. The construction of the mound itself, in which the first burial was performed, dates back to the Bronze Age - XVI-XV centuries BC. Then the burial was performed at the beginning of the first millennium of the new era, that is, about one and a half thousand years passed! And around the 8th-9th centuries, another burial was made. Thus, two and a half millennia lie between the first and the last burials of this mound!
- If measured from the time of our day, we skip even the era of Christ by half a millennium! Do you think every subsequent funeral organizer knew that someone had already been buried in the mound?
- Without any doubt! - says Alexander Tairov. - The fact is that these mounds were very high and are clearly visible from everywhere. The future inhabitants of the village, who came here two and a half centuries ago, also knew very well that this was a burial place.
And here's an interesting feature! Burial in these burial mounds seems to presuppose a kind of familiarization of the newly arrived population with those people who lived here. That is, they seemed to show by this: we, they say, are the descendants of those people who once lived here, and therefore we bury it here. And this despite the fact that these people represented completely different cultures! These people just wanted to establish themselves in their right to live on this earth! The philosophy is simple: we join them, and they, that is, their spirits, will protect us! Therefore, they did not dare to plunder these sacred burials.
Mosaic of ancient topography
- What is the value of the finds of this season?
- This burial ground is practically a blank spot on the map of Bashkiria. The last archaeological research was carried out in the south-west of Bashkiria about half a century ago - excavations of the burial ground of the late Sarmatian period. The rest of the area in the district has not been studied at all by archaeologists. The value of the finds of this season is that we managed to connect the central and northern parts of Bashkiria, which are well studied, with the Orenburg region. We kind of close this white spot and connect the Orenburg steppes with the forest-steppe zone of Bashkiria. Thus, the mosaic picture becomes more integral.
Having got acquainted with our research, Bashkir archaeologists noted: out of 400 known to them burials of the Timber period in the Southern Urals, there are no more than a dozen burials made in a frame on an ancient horizon. That is, our three burial mounds are among the very, very rare!
- Are there similar burials in the Chelyabinsk region?
- The Southern Trans-Urals is the zone of the Andronov culture, and the Ural Bashkiria is the zone of the Timber Culture. The western regions of the Chelyabinsk region are the junction between the Andronovskaya and Srubnaya cultures. Therefore, we can find mixed types of monuments, that is, we have a mixture of funeral traditions.
When we went to excavations in Bashkiria, we proceeded from our idea of the location of the monuments of the Southern Trans-Urals, and therefore tuned in to find the mounds of the Early Iron Age (RZhV). And here we were faced with the fact that there was a completely new topographic situation: where we have RZhV, they have mounds of the Bronze Age …
… While in the archaeological laboratory of SUSU, hundreds of shards are laid out on the table, which have yet to be glued together. Time will tell what intrigue the forthcoming restoration is preparing for historians. Who knows, maybe some of these shards were associated with our Ural ancestors two thousand years ago? Or maybe four …
