Research of the Aznabay-Taipak expedition

The expedition of the Ural Pedagogical Institute conducted protection excavations in the construction zone of the Solyanka-Aznabay-Taipak irrigation canal and adjacent areas of the firth and regular irrigation on the left bank of the Urals (Akzhaik and Taipak districts, Ural region). Several burial mounds (three or four mounds in each) and burial grounds of 10 or more mounds have been identified. In two groups on the left bank of the Solyanka River, called Solyanka 1-Orlinnoe Gnezdo and Solyanka 11-Limany, nine burial mounds 18–30 m in diameter and 0.5–1 m high were excavated, in which 22 single and pair burials were found. The main ones in the mounds were burials of the Sauromatian and Sarmatian times, the inlet ones were late nomadic.

In the Solyanka 1-Orlinnoe Gnezdo group, which consisted of three large burial mounds, a fourth (small) mound 30 m in diameter was unearthed, with a ditch up to 4 m wide. The central grave of the Sauromatian period was looted. In the western field of the embankment, an early Sarmatian inlet children's burial with a vessel and iron implements was discovered, and in the southern area on the ancient horizon. In the Solyanka II-Limany group, eight burial mounds with burials of the Sauromatian time were investigated, and in mound 1 an inlet burial of the Early Prokhorovka culture was found. The main paired burial of the Sauromatian period (6th-5th centuries BC) contained a rich inventory: a large bronze cauldron on a conical base and a large mirror, the remains of a quiver with a set of arrowheads, an iron dagger with a mushroom-shaped pommel, two clay vessels, small black pebbles. In kurgan 7, six burials were made in oval and square pits with an inventory of the 6th-5th centuries BC. In mound 8, the early Prokhorov burial was accompanied by a dagger with a sickle-shaped pommel and a straight crosshair, a wooden scabbard covered with foil, and a sword with a sickle-shaped pommel and a bar-shaped crosshair, 1.35 m long.