Barrows with “moustaches” in Eastern Kazakhstan: identification methodology and sults
Keywords:
archaeology, barows with “moustaches”, satellite imagery, GIS, archaeological reconnaissance, Eastern Kazakhstan, Central AsiaAbstract
Barrows with “moustaches” are burial and memorial sites distributed across a vast expanse of the Eurasian steppe zone. Issues concerning their provenance, chronology and cultural attribution have remained the subject of intense debate among archaeologists for nearly a century. This article proposes an comprehensive methodology for identifying barrowss with “moustaches” using satellite imagery. The approach was successfully applied over the extensive part of Eastern Kazakhstan and Eastern Saryarka, resulting in the identification of 183 previously unknown barrows with “moustaches” and increasing the source base for the study area by 270%. This is particularly significant in light of the hypothesis that this tradition originated in the eastern part of its distribution range. The newly introduced evidence is of considerable importance for the study of barrows with “moustaches” as a whole. Quantitatively, the newly identified sites increase by 29% the total number of previously recorded barrows of this type across the Eurasian steppe, from Eastern Turkestan to the Dnieper region. The methodology described in this article can also be applied for the searching barrows with “moustaches” in other parts of their distribution area. The study has shown that the method encounters serious limitations only in the high-mountain regions of the Altai, where dense vegetation cover renders these monuments indistinguishable in satellite imagery.
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