Excavations of Maitan burial ground

The Karaganda Museum of Local Lore expedition detachment investigated the Bronze Age burial ground located on the right bank of the Akkor River, 12 km northeast of the Khoroshev, Ulyanovsk district of the Karaganda region.

The burial ground consists of 39 burial structures of four types: mounds with enclosures 10-12 m in diameter and 0.3-0.8 m high; individual fences; fences with one - three outbuildings; structures of four or five fences. Seven fences 5-6 m in diameter were excavated from slabs set on edge, containing from one to three graves. The slabs were installed in grooves 15-25 cm wide and 25-40 cm deep. One fence (32) was rectangular, measuring 4.0x3.5 m. fence 8 - three. Building 7 consisted of five fences stretched out in a chain. 25 burials were unearthed: 24 of them were made in stone boxes, one in a ground pit. All the graves had a transverse overlap of slabs. The burials were made in a crouched position on the left side, usually with a western orientation with deviations to the south and north. A paired burial of children was found in a paired box (fence 8, grave 7). Altars were found in the fences, consisting of one to three vessels, skulls and bones of the limbs of cattle. In fence 4 of building 7, horse skeletons were recorded on both sides of the box at the mainland level.

From one to five vessels (pots, jars) were found in the burials, ornamented with hatched triangles, vertical and horizontal zigzags, grooves, a meander, a bronze socketed bullet-shaped and nine bone arrowheads, a pestle, a composite grooved bracelet with spiral ends, bronze plaques, cruciform and spectacle pendants, paste and bronze beads. The burial inventory has analogies in the Alakul-type sites of Kazakhstan and the Urals.