Excavations of the Tatli-Bulak kurgan cemetery in Northern Dagestan

In 2017 the Caucasian expedition of the Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences, conducted excavations of a kurgan cemetery known as Tatlibulak located in the Nogaysky District of the Republic of Dagestan. Each excavated kurgans contained one burial made in a niche. Distinctive features of the funerary rite (niches, orientation of the deceased in the southern part) and funerary offerings provide an opportunity to estimate chronology of the excavated sites as the second half of the 2nd century AD. The materials obtained reflect the process of exploiting steppe areas north of the Terek by descendants of the Middle Sarmatian culture which were influenced by the Late Sarmatian group. Geographically and chronologically, these materials are somewhere between the antiquities of the Middle Sartmatian culture of the Volga-Don steppes and the sites of the Terek-Sulak interfluve (Lvovskiy Pervyy-2, Lvovskiy Pervyy-4 cemeteries) dated to the 3rd century AD and mark migration of a part of the nomadic population of the Volga-Don steppes to the Terek-Sulak interfluve.