Ornament on the belly buckles from the Kimak burials in the Eastern Kazakhstan

The article considers the findings of bone belly buckles from the excavations of the F.H. Arslanova at the Kimak barrows from the Zevakino burial ground in the Eastern Kazakhstan. The outer surfaces of the two buckles contained the engraved ornament. One of the buckles is decorated with circular ornament. Lines were carved on the other buckle and they form the spiral ornament and elongated figures. Various techniques of ornamentation are retraced on the bone items in the cultures of medieval namads. Belly buckled with varied patterns were found in the Kimak barrows, excavated at the Zevakino burial ground in Upper Irtysh Region. It can evidence that in Kimak culture began to form spread their own cultural tradition of ornamentation in 1st millennium AD. Similar tradition is not retraced in cultures of other Turkic nomads, including ancient Turkic and Yenisei Kyrgyz in the Sayano-Altai and Central Asian historical and cultural region, but many antler and bone items with various ornaments were found at the sites of these cultures. The ancient burials with horses in Tuva, Minusinsk valley, Tien Shan contained the birchbark quivers, decorated by bone brackets with circular and value-shaped patterns. The fragments of such ornamented bone brackets for quivers were in the barrows of Yenisei Kyrgyz culture of 9 th - 10th centuries in Tuva. Appearance of the ornamented belly buckles in the Kimak sites of Upper Irtysh Region can be associated with development of their own original tradition to ornament the antler and bone items - the elements of horse harness.