Kurgan

A kurgan is a burial under a mound. It has a chamber of timber or stone, a heap of earth or rubble over it, and grave goods inside. Horses are often buried with the dead, so the practice is one of the marks of the steppe.

The form runs from the Bronze Age to the Göktürk memorial enclosures without a break. It was shared across peoples who spoke unrelated languages and who displaced one another by force. This continuity is the most-used and least conclusive argument in the study of the steppe. It shows that a practice travelled. It does not show who carried it.

The Orkhon inscriptions have a related word in a place name. The Kül Tegin inscription says that the army wintered at amga korgan, “the fortress of Amga”.^[1] One older reading takes the name as Magı Kurgan.^[2]