Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 48 (2) 2020   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2020.48.2.038-048

Annotation:  A Multidisciplinary Study of Finds from Suchu Island (1973 Season, Excavation II, Dwelling 1) A Zoomorphic Antler Staff from an Early Neolithic Burial at Pushkinsky, the Orenburg Region Cultural Attribution of Early Bronze Age Tombs Under Kurgans in Azerbaijan Two Rare Finds from the Maikop-Novosvobodnaya Sites in the Black Sea Region The Marfa Kurgan in the Stavropol Territory: An Example of an Ancient Architectural Structure On the Earliest Use of Plate-Formed Cheekpieces and the Emergence of Horse Riding (Based on Finds fr Wooden Constructions in Bronze and Iron Age Burials in Japan and Korea The Southeastern Sindica Frontier: The Raevskoye Fortifi ed Settlement Polychrome Style in Mangystau, Kazakhstan Metal Artifacts from a Newly Discovered Cemetery in the Severnaya Sosva Basin, Northwestern Siberia The Ethnoarchaeology of Russians in the Syro-Palestinian Region (18th–19th Centuries) Traditional Buryat Beliefs About Birds Bridal Symbols in the Don Cossack Wedding Celebration of Nowruz in Bukhara and Samarkand in Ritual Practice and Social Discourses (the Second Architectural and Archaeological Studies in the Tobolsk Kremlin During the 1950s (Based on Photograp Trepanations in Sauromato-Sarmatian Crania from the Lower Volga A Case of Surgical Extraction of the Lower Third Molars in a Cranial Series from the Pucara de Tilca   

The Marfa Kurgan in the Stavropol Territory:
An Example of an Ancient Architectural Structure

O.S. Khokhlova¹ and A.O. Nagler²

¹Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science, Federal Research Center “Pushchino Scientifi c Center for Biological Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, Institutskaya 2, Pushchino, 142290, Russia

²Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Eurasien-Abteilung, Im Dol 2–6, Haus 2, 14195, Berlin, Germany

This study focuses on the analysis of structural elements of the Marfa kurgan in the Stavropol Territory. We list and examine terms referring to such elements, and suggest our own. A description of the kurgan, its natural environment, excavation techniques, sampling, and analytical methods is provided. The material of which the kurgan was made is assessed, and its advantages over other materials are demonstrated. We studied mud blocks (or "bricks"), their clay coatings, and a striped adobe element from the kurgan. Results of chemical and granulometric analyses are outlined, along with those of the micromorphological analysis of soils underlying the kurgan, of the material of which the "bricks" and the coatings were made. The blocks were molded by thoroughly kneading and compacting a moistened material consisting of loess with the addition of river silt, without plant admixture. Clay coatings were much denser, as it consisted of a coherent finely dispersed clay-carbonate material. Clay mortar, similar to coatings in composition and properties, was used to connect the blocks and the stones of the crepidoma. The same mortar was used for foundations of clay "bricks" buildings. The adobe element with thinnest variously colored stripes resulted from a destruction of an earlier structure.

Keywords: Kurgan construction, Early Bronze Age, clay blocks, "bricks", soil science methods, micromorphology, Stavropol Territory