The kurgan with a cromlech and a ditch at the Almalyk-Dere (Mangup) cemetery

The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of an archaeological dataset on the excavations of kurgan no. 3 from Almalyk-dere, an early medieval cemetery located in a homonymous small steppe river valley on the southeastern slope of the fortified hilltop settlement of Mangup (southwestern Crimea). The site was excavated by sections in 2008-2022. As a result, it was found that it was a unique burial structure which included a kurgan mound, a circle built of stones (cromlech), a small ditch with a small joining bank in the southern part and a niche grave as the central burial. Based on the discovered finds, this archaeological complex with a male warrior grave can be reliably dated to the second half - end of the 4th century AD. The presence of the ditch with a joining bank in the southern part and the central burial finds analogies among excavated materials from the Late Sarmatian kurgans in the areas adjacent to Crimea.