Early Iron Age burial mounds in the Altay Mountains: from survey to analysis

An on-going Altay Mountains Survey Project at Ghent University in Belgium studies the archaeological landscape of the Altay Mountains since 2003. The project is directed by Prof. Dr. Jean Bourgeois and dr. Wouter Gheyle, and is done in cooperation with the Department of Geography (Prof. Dr. Rudi Goossens and Prof. Dr. Alain De Wulf). At the time of the Tumulistanbul meeting, six archaeological survey campaigns were executed to gather field data. This yielded a voluminous database with information about 12,047 archaeological structures.3 Burial mounds are certainly the most common features, with the tumuli or kurgans of the Early Iron Age (roughly 9th–2nd century BC) as the best-known examples. Our detailed site plans, combined with the resulting database, enable us to study the internal layout of the burial complexes and their geographical distribution. There are clear variations, sometimes linked with different research areas (higher valleys as opposed to lower areas, etc.). The paper will highlight several of these aspects.