Besoba and Syntas burial ground

The Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, together with the Aktobe Local History Museum, completed work on the Besoba and Syntas burial grounds near the Khlebodarov state farm in the Aktobe region. The last five mounds of Besoba and two on Syntas have been excavated. They are among the largest in these cemeteries: the mounds are 40–50 m in diameter and 1.5–3 m high.

The most complex and well-preserved funerary structure was found in mound 9 of the Besoba burial ground (diameter 52 m and height 2.8 m). The earth for the construction of the mound was taken from the ditch encircling the barrow. The initial width of the ditch was 8 m, and the depth was 2.5 m. The burial structure of the mound consists of three parts: an earthen burial platform of a rectangular shape (5x3.2 m), bounded on all sides by a deep ditch; a dromos corridor extending from the site to the south, and a wooden tomb (11x10 m) octagonal in plan, covering the burial site. The dromos corridor, 10.5 m long and 1.5 m wide, was carved into the mainland to a depth of 1 m. It was connected to the burial platform by a doorway with two earth steps. The same steps were found in the southern entrance part of the dromos.

Mound 9 contained two burials. A male warrior with an iron spear, an acinaces and a quiver of arrows lay in the western part of the platform with his head to the south, on his back, in the pose of a horseman. Around his neck is a hryvnia made of round gold wire. The central part of the site was occupied by “the awns of sacrificial animals and fragments of an earthen vessel. The second, female burial with a necklace of golden tubes and figured beads made of semiprecious stone, is placed in the southwestern corner of the wooden tomb, outside the burial ground. A bronze round mirror, two bas-relief plaques depicting two-humped camels, a gold earring with a pendant on a chain of intricate weaving, and an iron handle of some item overlaid with gold leaf with a zoomorphic ornament, fragments of four vessels were also found in the barrow. After the burial was made in the tomb, it was covered with a roll of logs, together with the dromos. From above, this entire wooden structure and the four-meter space around it are covered with thick panels of tree bark. A similar burial structure was also found in mound 11.

The rest of the mounds gave various options for surface wooden structures with collective male and female burials. In two barrows (4, 8) in collective burials, the female skeletons are oriented to the west, while the male ones are oriented to the south. More than 700 bronze arrowheads about 200 large items made of bronze, iron, bone, stone, gold and ceramics were found in the barrows. Among them: bronze plaques with a scene of confrontation between two camels, a direct analog of which is known from Pyatimar; a plaque with the image of a coiled predator, iron ringed bits with cheek-pieces in the form of griffin heads, a series of mirrors and iron acinaces with a butterfly-shaped hilt and pommel in the form of eagle heads, many piercings and plaques in zoomorphic style, a grindstone with a figure of some animal and an altar on four legs, bone decorations in the form of fish and an eagle, sewn-on plaques and gold earrings.

The clothing complexes of Besoba and Syntas have the closest analogies in the Sauromatian monuments of the late 6th - early 5th centuries BC and can be attributed to the same time. The features of the burial rite of the studied mounds, which reveal similarities with the sites of Uygarak, Besshatyr and Chilikty, bring them closer to the culture of the Saka of the southern and eastern regions of Kazakhstan.