Arshan (tuva)
Village
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Arshan ( Russian Аржан , scientific transliteration. Arzan , English transcription. Arzhan ; official place name Russian and Tuvan Аржаан , Arschaan ) is a village and called the local, same name, formerly Scythian burial place for rulers in Central Asia in the northwest of the Russian Republic of Tuva (south of Krasnoyarsk region ; north of Mongolia ), the history of which has been brought to light again through various excavations.
Geographical location
The Arshan region is a plateau which, from the excavation point of view, is also known as the “Tuvan Valley of the Kings” or “Valley of the Tsars”. As part of the Siberian steppe, the Ujuk , a right tributary of the Great Yenisei , flows through it. Its center is 25 km west-south-west of the small town of Turan and around 40 km north-west of Kyzyl on the north- western border of Tuva. The valley itself is oriented in a west-east direction.
The village of Arshaan is the administrative seat of the rural community (Tuvinian Sumon ) Arshaanskoje selskoje posselenije, to which the smaller village of Chkalovka, located eight kilometers to the southwest, belongs. The municipality has 835 inhabitants (October 14, 2010).
Excavations
Kurgan barrows and gold finds as well as the burial with horses are typical of the region and culture . The number of burial mounds there is in the hundreds. Inside such a hill there are structures made of spruce wood that form circular chambers, of which there were over 70 at hill 1 ( arshan stage ). As a special feature, these hills are arranged in several parallel chains and covered with stones. The excavations were numbered, so there is Arshan 1 (> 100 m diameter) or Arshan 2.
The excavator of Arshan 1 was MP Grjasnow (in the 1970s), who uncovered interesting wooden structures and thus the Scythian culture to the early periods of the late 9th and early 8th centuries BC, which had hardly been explored until then. Chr. Disclosed. Cross connections to finds from the late Bronze Age in western Siberia and the northern Pontic steppes could be successfully established by him. It turned out that the hill had already been looted in earlier times - only remains were found in the central burial chamber.
Further excavations took place in 1997 (Kurgan Arshan-Tarlag, in the west) and 1998-2003 (Arshan 2, belonging to the Aldy-Bel culture ) by the German Archaeological Institute . The second point was first geomagnetically surveyed by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation in Munich, then partially exposed in 2000 and completely uncovered by 2003. From Arshan 2 it is reported that attempts must have been made earlier to open the grave, but these were probably broken off so that the burial chamber remained intact. It is noteworthy that the Russian researchers who are evaluating the excavation finds at their temporary storage location, the Hermitage (Saint Petersburg) , assume that the artistic work precedes the more well-known Greek art objects. This knowledge clearly contradicted the reputation of the Scythians that they were exclusively a wild horde of steppe nomads. The gold treasure has been in the Tuwa National Museum in Kyzyl since September 2008.
Another Scythian find was made in Mongolia in the summer of 2006. This process was documented by ZDF as part of the Schliemann Heirs series . What was found was the mummy of a Scythian cavalry warrior, preserved in the ice of the permafrost, who had, among other things, a magnificent fur coat and gilded headdress with him.
In the summer of 2011, rescue excavations began in archaeological sites along the future route of the Kyzyl – Kuragino railway line . For the time being, the construction of the railway has not yet started, so that every year volunteers go on excursions to the area to support the excavation work.
Since 2017, another large kurgan has been investigated by a Swiss-Russian team, which dates to the Arshan stage and has a wooden structure similar to Arshan 1.
See also: Gold of the Scythians
literature
- Konstantin Čugunov, Hermann Parzinger , Anatoli Nagler: The gold treasure of Arzan - a princely grave of the Scythian period in the southern Siberian steppe. ( Memento from January 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on: dainst.de
- Konstantin Čugunov, Hermann Parzinger, Anatoli Nagler: The Scythian princely grave mound of Aržan 2 in Tuva. Preliminary report of the Russian-German excavations 2000-2002. In: Eurasia Antiqua. 9 (2003), pp. 113-162.
- AD Gratsch: Drewnije kotschewniki w zentre Asii. Moscow 1980.
- MP Graznjov: The Great Kurgan of Aržan in Tuva, South Siberia. Beck, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-406-30716-7 . (Materials on General and Comparative Archeology 23)
- AM Mandelschtam : Rannie kotschewniki skifskogo perioda na territorii Tuwy. In: MG Moschkowa: Stepnaja polosa Asiatskoi tschasti SSSR w skifo-sarmatskoje wremja. Archeologija SSSR. Moscow 1992.
Web links
- Complete excavation of the Arzhan 2 Kurgans with a prince's grave untouched (late 7th century BC). ( Memento from June 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (with image material)
- Archeology in Tuva - Scythian Gold From Siberia Said to predate the Greeks (English)
- Hermann Parzinger: Archaeological research in the Siberian steppe: the Scythian princely grave of Aržan ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 70 kB)
- ZDF reports on excavations in Arshan
Individual evidence
- ↑ ( Itogi Vserossijskoj perepisi naselenija 2010 goda. Tom 1. Čislennostʹ i razmeščenie naselenija (Results of the All-Russian Census 2010. Volume 1. Number and distribution of the population). Tables 5 , pp. 12–209; 11 , pp. 312–979 ( Download from the website of the Federal Service of State Statistics of the Russian Federation))
- ^ Archaeological and geographical expedition "Kyzyl-Kuragino". RGS, accessed January 25, 2015 .
- ↑ Gino Caspari, Timur Sadykov, Jegor Blochin, Irka Hajdas: Tunnug 1 (Arzhan 0) - an early Scythian kurgan in Tuva Republic, Russia . In: Archaeological Research in Asia . tape 15 , September 1, 2018, ISSN 2352-2267 , p. 82–87 , doi : 10.1016 / j.ara.2017.11.001 ( online [accessed January 1, 2020]).
- ^ Gino Caspari, Timur Sadykov, Jegor Blochin, Manuel Buess, Matthias Nieberle: Integrating Remote Sensing and Geophysics for Exploring Early Nomadic Funerary Architecture in the “Siberian Valley of the Kings” . In: Sensors . tape 19 , no. 14 , July 11, 2019, p. 3074 , doi : 10.3390 / s19143074 , PMID 31336812 , PMC 6679217 (free full text).