New Late-Scythian Necropolis Tanageldy in the Piedmont Crimea

Abstract

This is the first publication of the archaeological material obtained from the research of the necropolis Tanageldy of 2nd—1st centuries BC in the Piedmont Crimea. The expedition of the Scythian Neapolis Museum-Reserve in 2017 explored 3 collective ground crypts on the necropolis’s territory which belongs to a large settlement complex of ancient times in the city of Kara-Tau. Observations obtained in the course of a detailed anthropological analysis of the buried are curious. Mainly young women, adolescents and children were buried in the underground crypts, the bones of many of them reflect the consequences of routine hard physical labor. This phenomenon can be associated with the developed terraced farming, traces of which were found on the territory of the settlement complex. In one of the crypts, a skull of a man was discovered, with traces of three surgical interventions and separated from the body in ancient times.