Exploration of the Kok-Mardan burial ground

The detachment of the South Kazakhstan expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR continued to work at the Kok-Mardan necropolis. Three objects were excavated: III, IV, VI. The burial structures, the rite, and the inventory are generally the same. In the center of the kurgan-shaped hillocks, ground-based burial structures made of pakhsa, close in a plan to a square, were found, framed by a retaining wall-crepid. Dimensions of object III - 8.6x8.8 m, object IV - 11.5x12.0 m, object -VI - 10.0x10.5 m; height respectively 1.50; 2.30; 1.42 m. At site III, in addition to the 18 burials discovered in 1977, four more were unearthed; at facility IV-50; at facility VI, launched this season - 15. Separate burials were arranged along the perimeter of the rectangular area of ​​the platform, both in the thickness of the hardened pakhsa mass and in the mainland soil under the platform. Funeral structures for adults, consisting of a burial chamber and an entrance opening, are comparable to two well-known types of catacomb structures, in which the catacomb chamber is either a continuation of the entrance structure-dromos or perpendicular to it. Children's burial structures are similar to linens or covered niches.

Most of the skulls have traces of artificial ring deformation. Pottery is represented mainly by jugs with handles and spouts and mugs. Different mugs and jugs are provided with zoomorphic handles. The vessels with images of animals (goat and deer) scratched into wet clay are of interest. Found short single-edged swords, petiolate three-bladed arrowheads, shield and shieldless buckles, medallions, plaques with glass inserts, earrings, pendants, amulets, hryvnias, knives, spindle whorls. The material is identical to the materials of the Kok-Mardan settlement and dates back to the 4th-5th centuries BC.