Kavkazoved.info

Since 2006, every year, in the summer months, our expedition travels to Mount Dzhantukh - a joint project of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Abkhaz Institute of Humanitarian Research named after I. DI. Gulia of the Academy of Sciences of Abkhazia, the Abkhaz State Museum. Since 2009, the work has been carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for the Humanities. Since the same year, a teacher from the Bratislava University named after I. J. Komensky (Slovakia) Anita Kozubova. The discovered antiquities, after laboratory study and restoration (laborious and, we note, expensive), go to the funds of the Abkhaz State Museum.

Archaeological excavation is a difficult job in itself. Heat and rain, dust and dirt, a steep climb up the mountain, uprooting of age-old trees grown on the burial ground, household amenities minimized - not everyone can withstand such conditions. Every year people of different ages and professions from Russia and other neighboring countries come here. Over the past years, thanks to their work, several unique burial complexes have been studied, opening to us previously completely unknown pages of the history of Abkhazia. It can be said without exaggeration that the archeology of the early Iron Age (Scythian era and early antiquity) of Abkhazia has not known such finds since the excavations of M.M. Trapsh from the Guadikhu and Krasny Mayak burial grounds on the territory of modern Sukhum in the 1950s.

Who lived then, at the end of the 2nd - 1st millennium BC, here, in the Galidzgi (Aaldzgi) gorge? Why did this huge burial ground, occupying almost the entire summit of Mount Dzhantukh, arise then? You might think that there was a whole city here - so many human remains are discovered during excavations. It is probably superfluous to say that no remains of the ancient city have been found here. Probably here, on this mountain, which was obviously considered sacred, the remains of the deceased inhabitants of a huge area were brought. There are only a few such necropolises of this time in the Caucasus - Samtavro near Mtskheta in Georgia, the Koban burial ground in North Ossetia, the Tli burial ground in South Ossetia.