Keeping Mummies Frozen: Climate Change and

Scythian kurgans in the Altai

Celia EmmelhainzRevised 5 April 2012

The Altai MountainsChina, Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan “ancient crown of Asia”

What are Kurgans?Scythian burial mounds~ 5-20m diameter~ 1-2m of stones~ At or above permafrost~ 1000-2300ft above sea level

“as rain seeped down into the tombs, it froze and never thawed. As such, all buried material (metal, gold, and pottery… wood, leather, clothes, textiles and even mummified human bodies and horses’ bodies) was kept intact over” 2500 years… “To this day, the only frozen tombs discovered anywhere in the world are those that have been found in the Altai Mountains” (Han 2006).

The Berel' II kurgan in the Kazakh Altai

Excavations at Pazyryk, 1945-1949

Pazyryk Scythian burial mounds (500-300 BCE), adventuretravel.ru.

Second Wave of Excavations

1993 – “Ice Maiden,” High Ukok, Russia

1998 – Horses, Berel II, Kazakhstan

2004 – “Warrior,” Bayan-Ulgii, Mongolia

This page: diagram of kurgans in one Altai valley.

Excavating…

View of Arzhan 2

Excavating…"You're bailing in buckets constantly. It was damp. You know, when you were inside the tomb your feet were wet. There was a kind of a musty smell to it all, because in fact it had been preserved. So you had the organic materials—wool, wet wool—everyone knows what that smells like. And the horses were strong smelling as well, especially as their stomachs had been preserved. And when we opened that to get a sample, that was quite, quite strong." - Archaeologist Jeanne Smoot

Inside The Tombs

• 4-16 Horses– Slain on site, buried with gold headdress, harness

Fly larvae in stomach indicate burial in second half of June, once ground thawed

• 2-6 Embalmed bodies in Sarcophagus– soft innards removed and stuffed with peat and

bark (tannins), scented herbs, sewn up with horsehair, embalmed in wax

Sarcophagus

Mummies!

“Ice Maiden” • 5’6,” age ~25, tattoos• woolen dress, cord belt, silk blouse, riding boots

Mummies!

“Warriors” • tattoo of elk, waist-length braids, weapons

Left: bicep tattoo of an elk, in blue ink; right, pazyryk male with hair and tats intact.

Ancient Tattoos

Analysis…

Body of Scythian Warrior, Mongolian Altai

TextilesPersian and Chinese texttiles found in Pazyryk mounds are older than similar extant textiles found in Persia and China (Han 2006/2007)

Sacred Burial Space?

Scythian peoples, 800 BCE-100 CE

Historical and Cultural Significance

Pazyryk/Saka tribe of Scythians– Herodotus: warrior nomads– Goods from China, India, Persia

Useful for understanding both nomads and their relationship with nearby settled peoples

Arzhan 2 reconstructions by Pozdnjakov

Heritage: UNESCO’s Involvement• Russian Altai is a World Heritage

Site– expand to Chinese, Kazakh, Mongolian

Altai• Investigations 2006-2009• Survey/mapping all archeological sites• Continued monitoring for climate

change

Pazyryk applique felt carpet, 400bce

Climate Change in the Altai

• Faster than world average (0.2C/decade)– 27% glacier loss in last 100 years, 9-20m/year– permafrost up 200m since 1850, may be

substantially gone by 2050 CE– small kurgans with fewer stones most vulnerable

Current Recommendations

• Preserve ice lens in situ– Add stones– Shade mounds– “Thermosyphons”

• Excavate if neededThermosyphons!

Your Thoughts?• How do archaeologists balance the desire to

respect ancestors with the desire to know about ancestors?

• How do we make decisions about which sites to preserve, if we can’t preserve them all?

• How do we preserve sites in the face of economic development and tourism?

ReferencesBorodovsky, A.P., and A.N. Telegin

2007 Horn Saddle Ornaments Dating to the Scythian Period from the OB Plateau. Archaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology of Eurasia 30(2):52-62.

Bourgeois, Jean, et al.2007 Saving the frozen Scythian tombs of the Altai Mountains (Central Asia). World Archaeology 39(3):458-474.

Brilot, Madeleine2000 Les tatouages des momies de l'Altai (Tattoos of the Altai mummies). L'Anthropologie 104:473-478.

Francfort, Henri-Paul, Giancarlo Ligabue, and Zainullah Samashev2000 The contents of a Scythian kurgan frozen in the 4th century B.C. at Berel in the Altai mountains (Kazakhstan). Comptes Rendus De L'Academie Des Inscriptions:775-806.

Han, Junhi, editor2008 Preservation of the Frozen Tombs of the Altai Mountains. UNESCO World Heritage Center. UNESCO, European Union.

Jordana, Xavier, et al.2009 The warriors of the steppes: osteological evidence of warfare and violence from Pazyryk tumuli in the Mongolian Altai. Journal of Archaeological Science 36:1319-1327.

Marchenko, Sergei2008 Climate Change and its Impact on the Frozen Tombs of the Altai Mountains. In Preservation of the Frozen Tombs of the Altai Mountains. J. Han, ed. Pp. 61-63: UNESCO World Heritage Center.

Rosen, Arlene Miller, Claudia Chang, and Fedor Pavlovich Grigoriev2000 Palaeoenvironments and economy of Iron Age Saka-Wusun agro-pastoralists in southeastern Kazakhstan. Antiquity 74:611-623.

Vasquez, Jorge2008 Excavation and Sampling Techniques in the Frozen Tombs of Kazakhstan. In Preservation of the Frozen Tombs of the Altai Mountains. J. Han, ed. Pp. 67-70: UNESCO World Heritage Center.