This woman lived near the famous settlement of Arkaim (Chelyabinsk region) in the Late Bronze Age.
Her skeleton was discovered in the largest burial mound of the Kizilskoye I burial ground, on the bank of the Ural River, not far from the remains of a fortified settlement of the Sintashti culture. The Kizilskoye settlement is the westernmost of those belonging to the so-called ‘Country of Cities’.
Excavations of the monument have been carried out since the 1960s. An aerial survey of the burial ground was carried out, which revealed about 30 burial mounds located compactly along the shoreline in an area of 200 metres. The largest barrow (Barrow No. 2) is 22 metres in diameter and 0.4 metres high. In this area the local inhabitants were actively grazing cattle, the mounds were deteriorating and were about to disappear from the surface of the earth, so in 2008 archaeologists began to investigate the burials. Four structures in the northern part of the burial mound were excavated.
The largest mound was a rather complex construction: the oval burial ground was surrounded by a ditch 3.5 metres wide and about 1.5 metres deep. In front of the ditch were the remains of a wall made of mud-brick bricks. A second earthen wall, about 6 metres in diameter, surrounded the burial chamber, which in turn was carefully enclosed with large clay blocks. Burials were carried out in deep burial chambers.
The dead in barrow 2 were lying on their right side. The dead were buried in a layer of clay, sometimes mixed with red ochre. The burial inventory consisted of ceramic vessels and metal items.
The main pit of barrow 2 contained the bones of a woman aged 24-25. In addition, the remains of a man and a teenager aged 13-15 were found in the barrow. The skulls of the man and woman are elongated, the faces are broad, and the forehead is sloping. According to these features, the people of the Kizil burial mound are close to the Eastern European representatives of the Yamnaya culture. The specificity of the Kizil people is a small protrusion of the nasal bones.
Sculptural reconstruction of the face of a woman from barrow 2 was made by anthropologist Alexei Nechvaloda. A virtual portrait based on this sculpture was made by Philip Edwin, who provided the woman with sandy-blond hair and grey eyes, although he pointed out that without genetic data it is ‘guesswork’.
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This woman lived near the famous settlement of Arkaim (Chelyabinsk region) in the Late Bronze Age.
Her skeleton was discovered in the largest burial mound of the Kizilskoye I burial ground, on the bank of the Ural River, not far from the remains of a fortified settlement of the Sintashti culture. The Kizilskoye settlement is the westernmost of those belonging to the so-called ‘Country of Cities’.
Excavations of the monument have been carried out since the 1960s. An aerial survey of the burial ground was carried out, which revealed about 30 burial mounds located compactly along the shoreline in an area of 200 metres.
The largest barrow (Barrow No. 2) is 22 metres in diameter and 0.4 metres high. In this area the local inhabitants were actively grazing cattle, the mounds were deteriorating and were about to disappear from the surface of the earth, so in 2008 archaeologists began to investigate the burials. Four structures in the northern part of the burial mound were excavated.
The largest mound was a rather complex construction: the oval burial ground was surrounded by a ditch 3.5 metres wide and about 1.5 metres deep. In front of the ditch were the remains of a wall made of mud-brick bricks. A second earthen wall, about 6 metres in diameter, surrounded the burial chamber, which in turn was carefully enclosed with large clay blocks. Burials were carried out in deep burial chambers.
The dead in barrow 2 were lying on their right side. The dead were buried in a layer of clay, sometimes mixed with red ochre. The burial inventory consisted of ceramic vessels and metal items.
The main pit of barrow 2 contained the bones of a woman aged 24-25. In addition, the remains of a man and a teenager aged 13-15 were found in the barrow.
The skulls of the man and woman are elongated, the faces are broad, and the forehead is sloping. According to these features, the people of the Kizil burial mound are close to the Eastern European representatives of the Yamnaya culture. The specificity of the Kizil people is a small protrusion of the nasal bones.
Sculptural reconstruction of the face of a woman from barrow 2 was made by anthropologist Alexei Nechvaloda. A virtual portrait based on this sculpture was made by Philip Edwin, who provided the woman with sandy-blond hair and grey eyes, although he pointed out that without genetic data it is ‘guesswork’.
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