Kirkesken burial ground

The burial ground is located on the northern outskirts of the Timur station (Kyzylkum district, Chimkent region), on a flat sandy surface of a long ridge composed of bedrock. The location of the burials destroyed in the process of weathering was discovered by the director of the Shaulder Museum of Local Lore A. Alimov.

The Kurgan detachment of the South-Kazakhstan complex expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR explored 27 burials here with four excavations. The design of the burial structures could not be traced. In general, three types of burials have been identified: elongated on the back, facing right and oriented to the north-northeast; elongated on the back, facing up and oriented west-southwest; elongated on the back, facing up and oriented south-southeast. The burials of the first type are the latest. An earlier chronological group is made up of burials of the second and third types. Stratigraphic links between them are not established. The material of the late type of burials consists of iron knives, ceramics, bi-leather whorls and beads. Knives of medium size, with a straight back and a slightly curved blade; the petiole for the handle has a slight ledge. In ceramics, jugs with an elongated barrel-shaped body and a short, rolled neck predominate. Such vessels have been known since the first centuries of our era, but they were most widely used in the 4th century BC. The inventory of burials of the second and third types is the same and is represented by weapons, jewelry and ceramics. Let us note the joint finds in these burials of iron stalked arrowheads of various types: with a triangular head, straight blades cut at a right or obtuse angle, with a rhombic feather; trapezoidal blades; trihedral, with a pyramidal head, the base is separated from the long petiole by a nut. This is an almost complete set of types of iron arrowheads of the 1st-3rd centuries AD. Obviously, the investigated burials date back to the 2nd-4th centuries AD.