Research in the Irtysh region

The East Kazakhstan Regional Museum expedition continued to survey the monuments of the East Kazakhstan region. Three groups of burial mounds were examined 0.4-1.2 km southwest of Malaya Narymka village, Bolshenarim district. The mounds, 10-25 m in diameter and 0.2-2 m high, were built of rock. In the Tueuzek I group, a mound of the 3rd-2nd centuries BC was excavated. A stone ring (diameter - 14 m, height - 0.45 m), under which a soil pit (1.8х0.9х2.9 m) with shoulders was found, oriented from west to east and covered with stones. In a wooden coffin stretched out on her back, with her head to the west, a girl of 8-10 years old was buried. Two red-clay jars (on the shoulders), a gold earring with a three-bead pendant on gold wire, decorated with a rosette of six gold hollow balls, a round jade bead, a cylindrical jadoite bead and a barrel-shaped bead made of calcium carbonate, fragments of iron rods and piercings with a loop-shaped pommel, sheep's rib (at the feet).

Five kurgan groups stretched out in chains in the valley of Mount Kyzyltas were surveyed 2–5 km northwest of Vasilievka, Ulan district. Here mounds with a diameter of 5-45 m and a height of 0.2-4.5 m were erected from white quartz, gray slate and granite. Each group includes from 3 to 25 barrows. In groups II and III, mounds 30-45 m in diameter and 2.5-4.5 m high occupy a central place. At the base of two such mounds, dug-in upright slabs were found. But the shape and size of the mounds are tentatively attributed to the Early Iron Age.

Two kurgan groups have been found in the Kyzyl-Kain tract on the right bank of the Urunkhaika River, 2-4 km northeast of the Fifth Sibinsky Lake. Group I includes 23 medieval stone mounds of rounded (diameter - 6-18 m, height - 0.2 m) and elongated forms (length from north to south - 12 m, width - 6 m). Group II is apparently dated to the Early Iron Age. Slabs (1.5x0.6 m) of pink stone were found on its territory, apparently coming from destroyed burial structures, as well as displaced fragments of “deer stones” made of gray granite. On a fragment of a stone found in the northeastern part of mound 13, there are images of a belt, a round suspended object, and a simple bow. At the northeastern floor of kurgan 11, a quadrangular stele with a rounded top was dug in. Its height is 0.85 m, width - 0.35 m, thickness - 0.20 m.

On the territory of Ust-Kamenogorsk, a burial of the Bronze Age destroyed by the builders was further investigated. The burial of a woman was made in a soil pit at a depth of 1.58 m in a crouched position on her right side, her head to the west, and was accompanied by bronze earrings with a bell, chest hemispherical plaques with a punch pattern and two holes along the edge for fastening, 100 barrel-shaped beads and a clay jar a vessel decorated with broken lines applied with a comb stamp.