Ulskii Aul

Ul’skii Aul 

(now Uliap in Shovgenovksii Raion, Adygei Autonomous Oblast), an aul (village) in which ten burial mounds were excavated in 1898 and between 1908 and 1910 by N. I. Vese-lovskii. The oldest ones date from the sixth century B.C. The graves were robbed in antiquity, and consequently only the graves of the horses killed in the course of the burial were preserved, as well as a number of individual items. The largest mound, 15 m high, yielded the skeletons of more than 400 horses, killed during the burial of the chieftain. The most interesting finds were articles in the Scythian animal style. The burial mounds belong to the aristocracy of the local tribes—the Maeo-tae or possibly the Scythians, who settled in the Trans-Kuban’ Region after campaigns in Southwest Asia.

REFERENCES

Otchety Arkheologicheskoi Komissii (za 1898, 1908, 1909-1910 gg.). St. Petersburg, 1901-13.
Sokrovishcha skifskikh kurganov v sobranii Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha. A pictorial essay with text by M. I. Artamonov. Prague-Leningrad [1966].