Female Burials in the Thirteenth Through Fourteenth Centuries. The Nogoon Gozgor 1 Burial Site in the Northern Khövsgöl Area

ABSTRACT

In July 2017, a joint archeological expedition from Irkutsk National Research Technical University and Ulaanbaatar State University excavated at the Nogoon Gozgor 1 burial site in the Northern Khövsgöl area. The initial plan was to conduct the work at two burial complexes, nos. 5 and 6. By the beginning of the excavation it was clear that burial no. 6 had been plundered by modern-day grave robbers: a grave robbers’ shaft with a depth of up to 1.2 meters had been sunk in the center of the above-grave structure. Uncovered in excavation heaps of discarded soil were human and sheep bones and fragments of silk textile depicting peonies and parrots, stylized clouds, and undulating ornamentations. An excavation with an area of 32 square meters was marked out at grave no. 5. Discovered under oval masonry work 5 by 3 meters in size at a depth of 75 to 80 centimeters below the modern-daysurface of the land were the remains of a buried woman and pieces of a bokka—a birchbark frame for a headdress. It is the first time such an object has been found in the Northern Khövsgöl area. It has been established that the Nogoon Gozgor 1 burial site dates to the thirteenth through fourteenth centuries and was left by the indigenous population, connected to the global historical and cultural processes flowing through Eurasia in the era of the Mongol Empire.

KEYWORDS:

• Mongolia
• Northern Khövsgöl Area
• thirteenth through fourteenth centuries
• Nogoon Gozgor 1 burial site
• burial
• bokka
• silk
• depiction of a peony
• depiction of a parrot

Notes

1. Our translator Stephan Lang has used appropriate English translations found online. For Carpini: For Friar Giovanni diPlano Carpini, The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars, trans. Erik Hildinger (Boston: Braden Publishing Company, 2014), p. 42. For Rubruck: William Rubruck, The Journey Of William Of Rubruck To The Eastern Parts Of The World, 1253-55, As Narrated by Himself, trans. William Woodville Rockhill (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1900), p. 73.

2. Headdresses are well-known in the Turkic-Mongolic regions relevant here, through ethnographic data into the twentieth century. They are markers of married status as well as elite status. See, for example, the Kazakh wedding headdress in Vladimir A. Basilov, ed., Nomads of Eurasia (Los Angeles Natural History Museum, [Soviet] Academy of Sciences, 1989), p. 112.