Inskoy Dol: A New Early Bronze Age Site in Western Altai

We describe Early Bronze Age burial mounds at Inskoy Dol, in the lowland zone of western Altai. The cemetery includes two groups of mounds differing in funerary rite and burial goods. One of them reveals features typical of Afanasievo culture (round cairns made of 2-3 layers of small and medium-sized stones, stone enclosure, supine flexed position of the buried, heads directed toward the west, ocher coloring, and egg-shaped sharp-bottomed vessels). The other group corresponds to the Kurota type (round cairns made of stones placed flat in a single layer, supine flexed position of the bodies, eastern orientation, ocher coloring, no grave goods orjar-shaped vessels). Afanasievo and Kurota cemeteries, then, are separate but close to one another. The radiocarbon date of Afanasievo mounds is 29th to 27th centuries BC. Excavations at Inskoy Dol make it possible to specify the boundaries of the Afanasievo culture, suggesting that it was distributed not only in highland central Altai but in more westerly lowland areas as well.