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<< Our Photo Pages >> Arzhan Scythian royal necropolis - Barrow Cemetery in Russia

Submitted by Andy B on Sunday, 09 January 2011  Page Views: 14731

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Arzhan Scythian royal necropolis Alternative Name: Arzhan 1, Arzhan 2
Country: Russia Type: Barrow Cemetery
Nearest Town: Kyzyl  Nearest Village: Arzhan
Latitude: 52.095992N  Longitude: 93.710947E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4
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Arzhan Scythian royal necropolis
Arzhan Scythian royal necropolis submitted by Andy B : Arzhan 2, view over the kurgan and the surrounding stone circles with sacrificial areas German Archaeological Institute (Vote or comment on this photo)
Barrow Cemetery in Tuva. At the southern foothills of the Western Sayan Mountains in north Tuva runs a west/east orientated valley along the river Uyuk, a tributary of the Enisej coming from the east. Near the village of Arzhan, district Turan, it widens into a larger plain where hundreds of large burial mounds (kurgans) are found forming several parallel chains.

The kurgan Arzhan 2 consisted - like the tumulus excavated by Gryaznov - of a platform built from stone slabs which we now assume as being typical for the early Scythian period. The tumulus at Arzhan 2 had a diameter of nearly 80 m and was more than 2 m high, thus being slightly smaller than Arzhan 1. Three to four rows of more than 200 larger and smaller stone circles surrounded the mound at a distance of 20 to 50 m. Apparently such stone settings formed part of the concept of such large kurgans since comparable features have also been found at Arzhan 1 although here they consisted of stone mounds.

In the year 2000 initial excavations of the stone circles surrounding the large tumulus of Arzhan 2 revealed thin layers of burnt material containing small amounts of ash, charcoal and burnt animal bone (of sheep/goat, cattle and horse). Occasionally we also found smelted fragments of sheet gold and bronze objects. Without doubt these stone circles represent places for burnt offerings which were linked to a memorial cult connected with the burial. The excavation of the large tumulus at Arzhan 2 began in 2001 when slightly more than a quarter of its entire area was uncovered. Since southwest of the kurgan centre a large robbing funnel was visible, we initially avoided this area and instead opened three sectors in the vicinity: one in the centre of the southern half and a further two in the north and the north-west. In two of them we discovered Scythian graves: burial 2 in the north and burial 5 in the north-west.

More in the paper Complete excavation of the kurgan Arzhan 2
including an undisturbed royal grave (late 7th century B.C.).
German Archaeological Institute (also in German)

Note: "There is no reason to think that cancer is a new disease" - unearthing prehistoric tumours, and debate.
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"Arzhan Scythian royal necropolis" | Login/Create an Account | 5 News and Comments
  
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Re: Remarkable high res images of this area from Google Maps, can you find the mounds by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 11 January 2011
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According to these photos, Arzhan 2 is at 52.095992, 93.710947
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    Re: Remarkable high res images of this area from Google Maps, can you find the mounds by Andy B on Tuesday, 11 January 2011
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    That's it, thanks
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Remarkable high res images of this area from Google Maps, can you find the mounds? by Andy B on Sunday, 09 January 2011
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Remarkable high res images of this area from Google Maps, click on the third blue aeroplane. I know I have the right area from a map in the paper - it should be possible to see these parallel chains of hundreds of large burial mounds, can you find them?
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Unearthing prehistoric tumours, and debate by Andy B on Sunday, 09 January 2011
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When they excavated a Scythian burial mound in the Russian region of Tuva about 10 years ago, archaeologists literally struck gold. Crouched on the floor of a dark inner chamber were two skeletons, a man and a woman, surrounded by royal garb from 27 centuries ago: headdresses and capes adorned with gold horses, panthers and other sacred beasts.

ANCIENT DISEASE An X-ray of vertebrae from a 50–to 60–year–old man exhumed from an early medieval cemetery in Slovakia showed damage from what paleopathologists believe was metastatic carcinoma – a cancer that began in the soft tissues of the body and spread to the bone.

DIAGNOSIS Evidence of tumors in the skull of a male skeleton exhumed from an early medieval cemetery in Slovakia. Often thought of as a modern disease, cancer has always been with us.

But for paleopathologists — scholars of ancient disease — the richest treasure was the abundance of tumors that had riddled almost every bone of the man’s body. The diagnosis: the oldest known case of metastasizing prostate cancer.

The prostate itself had disintegrated long ago. But malignant cells from the gland had migrated according to a familiar pattern and left identifiable scars. Proteins extracted from the bone tested positive for PSA, prostate specific antigen.

Often thought of as a modern disease, cancer has always been with us. Where scientists disagree is on how much it has been amplified by the sweet and bitter fruits of civilization. Over the decades archaeologists have made about 200 possible cancer sightings dating to prehistoric times. But considering the difficulties of extracting statistics from old bones, is that a little or a lot?

A recent report by two Egyptologists in the journal Nature Reviews: Cancer reviewed the literature, concluding that there is “a striking rarity of malignancies” in ancient human remains.

“The rarity of cancer in antiquity suggests that such factors are limited to societies that are affected by modern lifestyle issues such as tobacco use and pollution resulting from industrialization,” wrote the authors, A. Rosalie David of the University of Manchester in England and Michael R. Zimmerman of Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Also on the list would be obesity, dietary habits, sexual and reproductive practices, and other factors often altered by civilization.

Across the Internet, news reports made the matter sound unequivocal: “Cancer Is a Man-Made Disease.” “Cure for Cancer: Live in Ancient Times.” But many medical experts and archaeologists were less impressed.

“There is no reason to think that cancer is a new disease,” said Robert A. Weinberg, a cancer researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., and the author of the textbook “The Biology of Cancer.” “In former times, it was less common because people were struck down in midlife by other things.”

Another consideration, he said, is the revolution in medical technology: “We now diagnose many cancers — breast and prostate — that in former times would have remained undetected and been carried to the grave when the person died of other, unrelated causes.”

Even with all of that taken into account, there is a fundamental problem with estimating ancient cancer rates. Two hundred suspected cases may not sound like much. But sparsity of evidence is not evidence of sparsity. Tumors can remain hidden inside bones, and those that dig their way outward can cause the bone to crumble and disappear. For all the efforts of archaeologists, only a fraction of the human bone pile has been picked, with no way to know what lies hidden below.

More, with images in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/health/28cancer.html?_r=2
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Scythian Gold From Siberia Said to Predate the Greeks by Andy B on Sunday, 09 January 2011
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January 9, 2002 By JOHN VAROLI
Russian scholars from the State Hermitage Museum have concluded that a discovery of Scythian gold in a Siberian grave last summer is the earliest of its kind ever found and that it predates Greek influence. The find is leading to a change in how scholars view the supposed barbaric, nomadic tribes that once roamed the Eurasian steppes.

The dig near Kyzyl, the capital of the Siberian republic of Tuva, revealed almost 5,000 decorative gold pieces — earrings, pendants and beads — that adorned the bodies of a Scythian man and woman, presumably royalty, and dated from the fifth or sixth centuries B.C. In addition to the gold, which weighed almost 44 pounds, the archaeologists discovered items made of iron, turquoise, amber and wood.

"There are many great works of art — figures of animals, necklaces, pins with animals carved into a golden surface," said Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage Museum. "It is an encyclopedia of Scythian animal art because you have all the animals which roamed the region, such as panther, lions, camels, deer, etc. This is the original Scythian style, from the Altai region, which eventually came to the Black Sea region and finally in contact with ancient Greece, and it resembles almost an Art Nouveau style."

Russian and German archaeologists excavated a Scythian burial mound on a grassy plain that locals have long called the Valley of the Kings because of the large number of burial mounds of Scythian and other ancient nomadic royalty.

The fierce nomadic Scythian tribes roamed the Eurasian steppe, from the northern borders of China to the Black Sea region, in the seventh to third centuries B.C. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. they interacted with the ancient Greeks who had colonized the Black Sea region, which is now in Ukraine and southern Russia. Not surprisingly ancient Greek influence was evident in Scythian gold previously discovered, but the recent find dates from before contact with the Greeks and from the heart of Siberia where, scholars say, contact with outsiders can almost be excluded.

Research on the Tuva burial mound, known as Arzhan 2, began in 1998, and to the amazement of scholars the grave was discovered to be untouched, though failed attempts by grave robbers to locate the burial chamber were evident on the sprawling, 185-foot-long, 5-foot-high mound.

This was the first such discovery since the early 1700's, when Russian explorers brought Scythian treasures to Czar Peter the Great, a find that became the State Hermitage Museum's collection of Scythian gold. All burial mounds explored since then had been robbed.

To avoid contamination and disturbing the items stored in the grave, the Russian and German archaelogists entered it first with a small remote-control video camera to study how burial items were originally arranged and to reconstruct the burial rituals. The discovery was made by Russian scholars from the Hermitage Museum and the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, led by the Russian archaeologist Konstantin Chugonov, who has been studying Bronze Age and Scythian sites in Tuva for 20 years.

German scholars also took part in the dig and were led by Herman Parzinger and Anatoli Nagler from the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin.

"Tuva's Valley of the Kings has long been a major area of interest for archaeologists because it contains the largest burial mounds in the region of Tuva and in all of the Altai region," Mr. Chugonov said. "We chose to work on those mounds in greatest danger, and we chose this one because of all the major mounds it is the most damaged."

About 25 percent of the excavated burial mound, which is stone slate, was destroyed when Soviet authorities built a road through the area in the 1960's. Over the years, residents walked off with pieces of the stone to use in building their houses.

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