Excavations of Temir-Kanka II burial ground
The detachment of the Shulba expedition of the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR continued to work in the flood zone of the Shulba reservoir. A group of medieval mounds of Temir-Kanka II was excavated, identified in the northern part of the previously explored Bronze Age burial ground Temir-Kanka I.
Four kurgans of this group, 12-15 m in diameter and 0.6–0.8 m high, were located in a chain along the east-west line at an equal distance from each other. All of them had small funnels. In kurgan 1, under a round mound (diameter 10 m, height 0.7 m), a fence made of massive, horizontally bedded granite slabs, square on the outside (6 x 6 m) and round on the inside, was found. From the inside, the fence walls with a height of more than 1 m and an average width of 1 m were lined with vertically inclined slabs. The fence is oriented to the cardinal points with a slight deviation. In the center of the fence, a vast (3 * 2.4 m - along the top, 2.15 * 1.2 m - along the bottom) and deep (2.25 m) pit was cleared, at the level of the ancient surface covered with slabs laid across, apparently resting, on wooden planks. At a depth of 1.2-1.3 m, another massive slab was found in the grave, which covered the sand and earth backfill. The space between the two mentioned tiers of slabs was filled with rock fragments and boulders.
In the grave in an extended position on the back, with the head to the east - northeast, in a wooden frame (1.75 m long, 0.45 m wide at the head, 0.3 m wide at the feet), a single female burial was made. Remains of sacrificial food were found near the bones of the left leg (the sacrum and tail vertebrae of a cow), to the left of the skull - a pentagonal slate tablet, on the left wing of the pelvis, in a cover made of wood and leather - a fragment of a bronze mirror with a circular ornament, and outside the frame in the area of the left knees - a fragment of an iron knife. Kurgan 1, like the entire burial ground of Temir-Kanka II, dates back to the end of the 1st millennium AD.
On the semi-demolished village of Belokamenka, Tavri district, East Kazakhstan region the detachment examined the destroyed burial mound of the end of the 1st millennium AD, where iron objects are collected - three-bladed petiolate arrowheads, bits, cheek-pieces, fragments of stirrups.