Scythian Culture - Preservation of The Frozen Tombs of The Altai Mountains (UNESCO)

CHAPTER III • CHALLENGE FOR CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Excavation and Sampling Techniques
in the Frozen Tombs of Kazakhstan
Jorge Vasquez
Régisseur des expositions
Musée du quai Branly, France
In 1998 and 1999, the Mission archéologique
française en Asie centrale (MAFAC), in cooperation
with the Kazakh Archaeological Institute and
the Italian Liguabé Foundation, carried out two
excavations of a so-called “frozen tomb” at the
site of Berel’ in Kazakhstan, and I was invited to
participate as a specialist restorer by Henri-Paul
Francfort, director of the excavations.
The notion of a “frozen tomb” involves the
burying of bodies and various objects in soil that
is permanently frozen – permafrost – thus guaranteeing
the sometimes exceptionally wellpreserved
organic remains that can be found in
such tombs. This type of soil is characteristic of
polar regions and of high-altitude zones. There
are many so-called frozen sites in the mountainous
region of the Altai in southern Siberia, including
the site of Pazyryk, first excavated in 1929,
and that of Ukok, excavated in 1992. Other sites
have also been recently discovered by German
and by joint French and Mongolian teams.
The conservation of bodies and organic artifacts
is a complex process, and it is one that is
closely linked to the type of grave, the depth of
the burial, the cycles of thawing and freezing that
have taken place, the sediment type and the
amount of water held in the soil. Publications
available on frozen sites of this sort seldom
explain the excavation methods used, restricting
themselves to explaining that warm water was
used to thaw the materials found. At Berel’,
guidelines for excavation and sampling of the
archeological remains were drawn up, in order to
preserve the “cold chain”, slow down deterioration
and not put future scientific analysis of the
objects found at risk.
The Berel’ necropolis is located in a large,
high valley 1,200 metres above sea level in the
Kazakh part of the Altai Mountains on the border
between China and Russia. This valley has long
been used as a pass between Chinese Turkestan
and southern Siberia, and more than 20 of the
burial mounds it contains have been recorded.
The Berel’ necropolis is the most southerly of the
mounds that have been found, and it features as
such on maps of Siberian frozen tombs. All the
burial mounds, or kurgans, at Berel’ belong to the
eastern Scythian culture (Saka) and to the
Pazyryk period that lasted some 50 years during
the 5 th century bce (between 420 and 350 bce,
according to dendro-chronological analysis). The
first and largest kurgan in this necropolis was
excavated by a Russian specialist in Turkic civilization
in 1865, and it was excavated again by a
St. Petersburg team in 1958. This kurgan had been
looted, and nothing now remains of the organic
materials and fragments of ornaments that it
contained. However, notes taken by the archaeologists
at the time record the remains of 16 horses
in the tomb, as well as of a funerary chamber.
In 1997, MAFAC decided to excavate the
smaller burial mound No. 11 at the Berel’ site,
thinking that it might contain objects similar to
Fig. 1 Two pairs of
wooden horns in the
shape of ibex horns
found during
excavation of the
Berel’ 11 kurgan.
Fig. 2 A refrigerated
lorry used at the site
to store the excavated
remains.
Photos: © Mission
Archéologique Française
en Asie Centrale (CNRS-
MAE) J. Vasquez.
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