Progress 2, Russia
N 43.822691°, E 43.350278°
Excavation ‘Nasledie’, Stavropol 2009-10, licence №209-545 (S. Ja. Berezin)
In the same environmental zone as the sites of Marynskaya 3 in the piedmont steppe zone of the North Caucasus, in a distance of 20 km five of the ten mounds of the group Progress 2 were excavated prior to gravel extraction in the former riverbeds of the river Malka. Here, the entire river terraces are dotted with burial mounds of which several have been excavated in the 1970’s. The mounds were located on the first terrace on the left side of the river. Several mounds were clustered, while mounds 5 and 10 were slightly separated. Mounds 1 and 4, from which the sampled individuals stem, were part of one cluster. Most of the burials in all mounds date to the North Caucasus cultural formation, but mound 1 and 4 were firstly built on top of Eneolithic inhumations. Two of them were sampled and produced genome-wide data.
Mound 1 was the largest mound with a diameter of 40 m and a height of 2.2 m. Its construction comprised three phases with two stone shells and a stone circle. In the 18-19th century the place was used as a cemetery by the local Islamic population. The founding grave 37, which was sampled for aDNA analysis, dates to the Eneolithic epoch and is related to the aforementioned group of Don-Caspian-Caucasus Eneolithic complexes. Of the remaining burials in this mound two are associated with the Yamnaya epoch, and eleven graves date to the Middle Bronze Age with inventories attributed to the North Caucasus formation.
Mound 4 was smaller with a diameter of 20 m and a remaining height of only 0.3 m. The founding graves were two Eneolithic burials, graves 9 and 12, which were found side by side and revealed practically identical radiocarbon dating. Both skeletons were thickly packed in red ochre and grave 12 revealed a complex trepanation35. One grave in this mound is associated with Yamnaya, four with the Middle Bronze Age (North Caucasus) and one burial dates to the Sarmatian period. Three individuals from Progress 2 produced genome-wide data:
•PG2001.B0101.TF + B0201.TF (BZNK-113/4), kurgan 1, grave 37, was the Eneolithic founding grave in mound 1 was found in an oval pit, thickly packed in red ochre. The grave goods consisted of a long flint blade, a flint adze, a flint projectile head and another flint object. A radiocarbon doublet of charcoal and human bone revealed a strong reservoir-effect in the human bone date. Dating: human bone 4991-4834 calBCE (6012±28BP, MAMS-110564), charcoal 4336-4173 calBCE (5397±28BP, MAMS-110563)
•PG2002.A0101.TF (BZNK-303/1), kurgan 1, grave 25b. The burial was placed in a rectangular pit attributed to the North Caucasus culture and was equipped with bronze ornaments and a collier of bronze and gagat beads. On top of this grave a second North Caucasus grave 25a without grave goods was discovered. Dating: 2483-2342 calBCE (3929±22BP, MAMS-29815)
•PG2004.A0101.TF + C0101.TF (BZNK-062/1+3), kurgan 4, grave 9, was one of the two Eneolithic founding graves in the mound. The individual was found in a shallow grave pit packed in a thick layer of red ochre. The grave inventory contained the fragment of a ceramic vessel, a long flint blade and a bone object. Dating: 4233-4047 calBCE (5304±25BP, MAMS-11210)
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