Old Turkic graves with signs of primary raw horn processing in the South-West of the Altai

This publication aims to introduce into the scientific use the Old Turkic grave with a horse which was first discovered in Gorny Altai and whose auxiliary inventory included the results of collection, transportation and cutting of elk horns as bone-carving raw material. The conducted research agenda is related to identifying the attributes of the initial stage of bone-carving production in the medieval Central Asia, which is reflected in the burial complex materials. Horn processing in the Old Turkic epoch in the Altai is regarded as one of the most vivid phenomena of the tangible culture of the medieval Eurasian nomads. It is from this mountainous region possessing the entire variety of raw materials that different products closely related to the Old Turkic cultural tradition were distributed. Nevertheless, actually until recently no archeological complexes of that time were known with any materials related to the initial bone-carving stages. The research methodology is based on the material approach with the use of morphological analysis of the resource composition and trasological study of the processing traces. The resource basis for the research is represented by Burial Mound 13, Karakaba I, located on the territory of Katonkaragay District, East Kazakhstan Region, the Republic of Kazakhstan. In the course of the conducted research, the authors drew the following conclusions. First, the set of the initial elk horns cutting from the Old Turkic Burial Mound 13, Karakaba I, possesses the entire potential of the most widely spread bone-cutting raw parts which are typical of the Old Turkic cultural environment. Second, the geographical analysis of occurrence of products based on such specific raw parts testifies to their quite extensive use from the forest-steppe region between the Ob and the Irtysh, to the Sayan-Altai mountainous valley, including the Altai, Tuva and Khakassia. Third, the mere grave of the necropolis of Karakaba I is referred to rather old graves of the Old Turkic epoch in kerfs, and is obviously related to the traditions of furnishing the auxiliary inventory connected with transportation. The manifestation of the latter feature at the level of burial rituals is likely to have had a sacral and symbolic meaning. Such wide territorial analogies of the bone-carving objects from the burial mound groups of Karakaba I and II that can be found on various territories of the Altai (Srostki), East Kazakhstan Region (Kyzyl-Tu), the Baraba forest-steppe (Chulym-2), and the Upper Ob region (Plotnikovo) along with the set of horn raw materials bearing the traces of initial cutting allow considering this burial complex as one of the sample ones for the medieval bone-carving industry in Central Asia and the southern part of Western Siberia.

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