TYUMEN, RUSSIA—The Siberian Times reports that a team of researchers led by Alexander Tkachev of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography of Tyumen State University discovered the grave of a young Sikhirtya child among nine possible burials, surrounded by a small moat, on a high point on the Tazovsky peninsula. The child is thought to have been three or four years old at the time of death, which occurred in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries. The body had been placed on pieces of birch bark that had been sewn together, and was buried with two iron knives and an arrowhead. The child wore an impressive hat made of pieces of fur lined with woolen cloth. Bronze decorations had also been sewn into it. Reindeer bones at the child’s feet suggest that a meal of roasted venison, possibly cooked on mounds in the necropolis, was also provided for the afterlife. “The burial was unusually rich for such a little child,” Tkachev said. “In fact, we were rather taken aback.” For more, go to “Siberian William Tell.”
