Research of the Karaganda Museum

The Karaganda Museum of Local History expedition continued the study of the Maitan Bronze Age burial ground on the right bank of the Aksu River. A mound and 20 fences made of slabs placed on the edge were investigated. Five fences (4A, 10, 17B, 20, 40) of a rectangular shape measuring 4.5-6х3.75-7.5 m. Three fences (10, 11, 41) each had one extension. Fences 4, 15, 17 consist of five, and fence 18 consists of ten extensions. In the fences - from one to four graves. Mound 6, with a diameter of 12 m and a height of 0.7 m had a stone mound. Under it, an introductory burial from the era of early nomads was found. Under the mound's earth a fence of inclined slabs was found, in the center of which there was a stone cist, the second was found at the south side of the fence. 10 children's burials were found in earth pits, covered with stone slabs.

99 burials were unearthed at the burial ground: 72 in cist and 27 in earth pits. Most of the graves had a transverse overlap of slabs. The burials were made according to laying a corpse (94) and cremation (5). The buried lie in a crouched position on the left or right side, usually with a western orientation. Altars were found in the fences: one or two vessels, skulls and bones of horses and cattle. The skeleton of a cow was found in fence 15A at the mainland level. The graves contain from one to six vessels, pot and jar-shaped, ornamented with hatched triangles, zigzags, carved lines, grooves, rhombuses. Also found were a bronze knife with an outlined crosshair, stone and bone arrowheads, bronze grooved bracelets with spiral ends, plaques with a solar ornament, gilded rings, and pendants in one and a half turns; paste, bronze, and bone beads.

The material of the burial ground finds analogies in the sites of the Alakul type of the Trans-Urals and Kazakhstan.