Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 49 (4) 2021   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2021.49.4.069-079

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,   

Integrative Geophysical Studies at the Novaya Kurya-1 Cemetery
in the Kulunda Steppe

O.A. Pozdnyakova¹, E.V. Balkov², P.G. Dyadkov², Z.V. Marchenko¹, A.E. Grishin¹, and N.D. Evmenov²

¹Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

²Trofimuk Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Koptuga 3, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

We outline the results of prospection studies at the Novaya Kurya-1 cemetery in the south of Western Siberia, using remote sensing methods such as aerial photography, ground-based magnetometry, high-precision aeromagnetic survey, electromagnetic profiling, and electrotomography. Original techniques were used to construct relative relief maps, and an inversion of data from ground-based magnetic survey at various altitudes was carried out. The first technique reduces the effect of natural relief, and highlights anthropogenic altitudinal anomalies, making the analysis of digital elevation models more efficient. The second technique is helpful for assessing the thickness and depth of anomalous magnetic bodies or horizons, not only providing planigraphic information but enabling us to evaluate two- and threedimensional geometric properties of the detected objects. As a result of the analyses, at least 14 kurgans were identified at the cemetery, six ofwhich lack salient outward features. Structural details suggest that most of them date to the Early Scythian time (800-400 BC). On the basis of the interpretation of the results of highly efficient prospection analyses using the UAV platform, offering the possibility of surveying a large area (about 25 ha), the boundaries of the site were determined. Several features were detected. To identify these, further studies are needed.

Keywords: Magnetometry, aeromagnetic survey, aerial photography, electromagnetic profiling, electrotomography, burial mounds