Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 49 (4) 2021   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2021.49.4.057-068

Annotation:  The Early Paleolithic Go Da Site and the Bifacial Lithic Industries of Southeast Asia Paleolithic Personal Ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave: The Formation of Early Symbolism and Its Region A Multidisciplinary Study of Burnt Deposits at Surungur, Fergana Valley, Southern Kyrgyzstan Handles of Early Iron Age Cauldrons from Southwestern Siberia The Pazyryk Style Burial of a Hunnic Period Noblewoman at Karakabak, Mangystau, Kazakhstan Integrative Geophysical Studies at the Novaya Kurya-1 Cemetery in the Kulunda Steppe Reconstructed Paleodiets and Subsistence Strategies of the Central Ciscaucasian Population (1000 BC Archaeological Evidence of Migration from the Southern Taiga of Western Siberia to the Urals in the Hephthalite Coin from an Early Medieval Burial at Gorny-10, Northern Altai Kainar: A Late 18th to Early 20th Century Ritual and Housing Complex in the Northern Ustyurt Tungus-Manchu Traditional Beliefs. Part 2: Zoomorphic Complex Urbanization of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia and the Far East (20th to Early 21st Centuries) Patterns in the Population History of Northern Eurasia from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age,   

Burial of a Hunnic Period Noblewoman at Karakabak,
Mangystau, Kazakhstan

A.E. Astafyev¹ and E.S. Bogdanov²

¹Mangystau State Historical and Cultural Reserve, 3rd Microdistrict 66, Aktau, 130001, Republic of Kazakhstan

²Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

This study continues a series of publications describing the findings of excavations at the Karakabak cemetery on the Mangyshlak Peninsula, dating to the Hunnic period. Burial 11 was that of a girl dressed in an outfit imitating a royal vestment. The reconstructed headdress consisted of a cape decorated with round, gold plaques and a diadem-type headband of red cloth with mask-shaped plaques. The central forehead plaque is a replica of Hellenistic gorgoneia. Similar masks were found in the Volga basin and the Northern Black Sea region. Temporal mask-plaques, carved of wood and covered with gold foil, have no parallels but follow the archaic Scythian tradition. Belt and shoe buckles were not attached to belts and were not used in everyday life. In terms of style and technique, the gold casing with an embossed geometric design on a wooden base belongs to a series of artifacts of the so-called Shipovo horizon. The buckle frames are shaped as stylized birds of prey with spread wings. The forehead plaque and details of the shoe straps are paralleled by those from Altynkazgan. The Karakabak artifacts are unique for the Aral-Caspian region, providing yet another indication of close cultural ties with the Hunnic world. All details of the outfit were likely manufactured at a nearby workshop (the Karakabak settlement) in the second half of the 5th or first half of the 6th century for the burial of a nomadic noblewoman.

Keywords: Mangystau, Karakabak, Hunnic artifacts, Shipovo horizon, outfit, diadem