Scythian monumental burial mounds and their periphery in the northern Precaucasus. The Sengileevskoe-2 Kurgan

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hermann Parzinger
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2014 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262000317

Research on the monumental burial mounds (kurgans) in the steppe- and forest-steppe belt of Eurasia, which date from the Early Iron Age and were built by the carriers of Scythian culture, has yielded many new results in the past 10-15 years, shedding new light on these monumental structures created by the horse nomads. It turned out that not only burials, hoards as well as sacrificial and other cultic complexes were associated with the kurgans; important structures may be found in the immediate surroundings of the monumental burial mounds as well. Due to these findings, the monumental kurgans of the central Pre-Caucasus (the region of present-day Stavropol/Russia) can not only be interpreted as burial sites of the élite, but also as ritual and cultic centres of the Iron-Age horse nomads. The few kurgans in the region that have so far been explored were all built in the so-called archaic period of the Scythian age (7th-6th centuries BV). This period was associated with the so-called heroic history of the Scythians as described by Herodotus (Herodotus I, 103-106), when horse nomads formed alliances and embarked on military expeditions to the Middle East. Until recently, only one kurgan from the classic period (5th-4th centuries BC) was known to exist in the entire region of Stavropol: the Kurgan Sultan, explored in 1899-1901. While many prominent Scythian kurgans, from the middle Dnepr River in the Ukraine (e.g., Tolstaya Mogila, Chertomlyk, Solocha) to the Kuban area in the northern West Caucasus (e.g., Ulyap, Tenginskaya), date from that very period, almost nothing is known about that era with regard to the Stavropol region adjacent to the east. Hence, the project proposed here is an urgent research desideratum. In late summer 2013, parts of a monumental burial mound in the region of Stavropol were examined in the context of a rescue excavation, which produced several gold objects dating from the 4th century BC. This meant that a kurgan from the classic period had been discovered. Due to the applicants many years of experience in studying monumental burial mounds of the Scythian era in various parts of Eurasia, the Russian colleagues asked him to undertake the further exploration of that kurgan (geophysical survey and excavation). The project has an interdisciplinary layout, pooling archaeology, geophysics, physical anthropology, archaeozoology, archaeobotany, and paleogenetics. This will be the first time such a monumental burial mound is explored by means of modern excavation methods, complemented by natural-scientific approaches. In addition, it opens up chances for a more comprehensive discussion about the place of the monumental burial mounds in the North Caucasus within the cultural context of Eurasia.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Russia
• Participating Institution: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut; Abteilung Eurasien; GUP 'Nasledie'; Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz ; Fachbereich Biologie ; Institut für Anthropologie (aufgelöst); Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften; Sektion Geophysik
• Participating Persons: Dr. Andrej Belinskij; Dr. Anton Gass