Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2025 - 37

near the village of Kum-Döbö in northern Kyrgyzstan's
Kochkor Valley. After unauthorized excavations in 2010 and
2011, followed by looting in 2015, damaged the tomb, a team
from Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University led by archaeologists
Kubatbek Tabaldiev and Kunbolot Akmatov carried out rescue
excavations in 2017 and 2018. They unearthed a structure that
differs in many ways from those typically found in the area.
The mausoleum consists of two adjacent chambers connected
by an arched passage. Inside the entrance, there is a rectangular
antechamber measuring eight by 13 feet. Beyond it lies a
larger domed burial chamber measuring 21 feet square that has
a coffin made of baked brick built on top of the floor. Each
chamber's floor is paved with two layers of brick tiles.
The tomb held the remains of three people, who had all
The floor of the Kök-Tash mausoleum was paved with two
layers of brick tiles, one of several features suggesting it
was a Qara Khitai burial.
the empire. In the 1930s and 1940s, archaeologist Alexander
Bernshtam identified a number of structures and burials at sites in
Kyrgyzstan as belonging to the Qara Khitai based on the presence
of Chinese artifacts. However, later archaeologists determined
that Bernshtam's discoveries were either from a different period
or, in the case of the burials, had features inconsistent with the
many Liao tombs that have been excavated in China.
For the next eight decades, little progress was made in
identifying evidence of the Qara Khitai. Beginning in 2019,
Michael Shenkar, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem who specializes in the pre-Islamic period in
Central Asia, taught a class on Eurasian nomads with Biran.
Shenkar was surprised to learn of the near-total absence of
Qara Khitai material in the archaeological record and conferred
with archaeologist Valerii Kolchenko of the Kyrgyz
National Academy of Sciences. " Valerii told me, 'We don't
really have anything,' " says Shenkar, " 'but two of our colleagues
recently excavated a very strange underground mausoleum
which probably belonged to this period. Perhaps you should
take a closer look.' " The tomb, now known as the Kök-Tash
mausoleum, was first revealed in 1998 during construction
been moved from their original resting places at some point
in time. The upper portion of a woman's skeleton was discovered
in the coffin. Her skin was partially preserved and
covered with green powder. Bones from the lower portion
of her skeleton lay a few feet away on the floor. Curiously, a
thighbone and shinbone were each wrapped in bronze wire
mesh. Researchers concluded that the upper portion of the
woman's skeleton had originally been wrapped in the same
mesh, which had oxidized to produce the green powder.
Atop the lower portion of the woman's skeleton was a man's
skeleton, also covered in green powder, suggesting that it,
too, had once been wrapped in bronze mesh. Archaeologists
surmise that the man and woman were likely a married couple
who were originally buried together in the coffin. The skull
of an adolescent, which has been radiocarbon dated to the late
thirteenth century, was discovered in the soil around three feet
above the floor of the square chamber, and additional bones
belonging to this skeleton were found outside the tomb, near
its entrance. Researchers believe the adolescent's remains were
deposited at a later date than the couple's, which have not yet
been radiocarbon dated.
A range of material including glass, metal, and stone objects
found at the level of the adolescent's skull or higher seems to
belong to a period after the couple were buried. A few finds
from the tomb's floor, however, appear to be the couple's
A low table (above) pieced together by
archaeologists from fragments of blue glazed
pottery and a dozen jade plates (right) were
buried along with the Qara Khitai couple.
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Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2025

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