Russia's megaliths: unearthing the prehistoric tombs of Caucasian warlords

Zhane Valley, Gelenjik, Western Caucasus, Russia

28th July to 29th August

This summer, I was involved in a project run by Dr. Viktor Trifonov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, researching some of the Western Caucasian dolmens. There are over 3000 dolmens located within the area of the Western Caucasus, often in cemeteries of up to five hundred, with more dolmens being discovered and recorded each year. Despite the large number of monuments, there remains a substantial lack of comprehensive knowledge about the dolmens and the culture that constructed them.

The project in the Zhane Valley aims to study, restore, protect, and eventually present to the public, hopefully in the form of Russia's first archaeological park, a group of prehistoric megalithic tombs, unique in terms of architecture, design, size, location and state of preservation, and dating from between the end of the fourth millennium BC and the beginning of the second millennium BC. The original aims were to discover when, why and how the Zhane megalithic complex was built, and how it originally looked. Additionally it was considered important to establish the duration, and manner of usage of the complex, and to try to ascertain why there are differences between the Zhane complex and the rest of the dolmens in the Zhane Valley.

The Zhane I group of dolmens had been excavated and reconstructed in previous seasons, and helped give a clearer idea of what we were excavating. As shown below the group consists of three monuments, the largest in the centre being 4m x 4m and the two side dolmens being circular, of 4 and 5 m in diameter. The first two monuments were surrounded by large stone mounds.

The Zhane II group of dolmens had been partly excavated. Dolmen 2 was found to be very unique, with a secret entrance at the back of the chamber, and a façade, dummy entrance and courtyard on the front of the dolmen.

This season, in addition to further research of the Zhane I and II groups of dolmens, the project's main aim was to undertake a systematic survey of the valley to attempt to locate the Bronze Age settlements of the 'dolmen people', and to increase knowledge of the regional distribution of dolmen cemeteries, settlements and quarries, with the hope that this would allow for the Zhane Valley dolmens to be considered within their landscape, and from a more phenomenological perspective.

During my time on the Zhane Valley project, I was involved in several different activities; The most labour and time-consuming was the excavation of dolmen 3 of the Zhane II group, which is located about 400m from the Zhane I group. The dolmen had collapsed, and with many of the stones weighing several tonnes, the most effective way to investigate the structure was to excavate around all the stones and then to identify the different major components of the dolmen, such as the porthole slab, the capstone and the other main walls of the structure. Once the stones had been exposed they were measured and planned, which was quite a challenge as the dolmen was located on a steep slope. Another large difference that I noticed was the Russians different values to women being involved in excavation. Trowelling was a female task, and males would use shovels and spades, and if I tried to use a spade or do anything more manual than trowelling, I would be reminded that in Russia it is not good for women to be strong.

Everyday, to my surprise, hundreds of visitors came to visit the dolmens, the site being advertised solely by word-of-mouth. The public have constructed a variety of beliefs related to the dolmens, and visitors could often be found meditating or leaving offerings close to the dolmens. Different dolmens are believed to have power in different areas, such as health, love, and family; people should leave offerings at the appropriate dolmen to get help in each of the different areas of their lives. A variety of stories concerning the construction of the dolmens have also been created, one of the archaeologists told us he had heard one tour guide telling people that the dolmens had been built by a group of 'black rabbits'!

The other major aspect of the project, which I was involved with, was reconnaissance, both in terms of recording the location of dolmens, and trying to pinpoint the settlements of the Bronze Age 'dolmen people'. To locate such areas we were reliant upon the knowledge of local people, which made it a very time-consuming process, especially as many of our informants had little experience and knowledge of archaeology. One gamekeeper who spent two days with us, kept telling us that various hillocks in an area were the result of 'volcanic action', the problem with this was that there are not and never have been any volcanoes in the area!

Some areas were subject to surface collection, although in a less organised manner than I would have expected. Literally wandering across the field and picking up anything which we saw, rather than constructing a grid, and so on. Although at first I was very shocked at this method and the lack of preciseness, I realised that this was really the only viable method in such an area, where we have no knowledge, and are simply trying to roughly locate habitation areas. In several of the areas large quantities of medieval pottery sherds were found, but very little prehistoric pottery. Due to the large quantities of medieval pottery, only diagnostic parts were retained to be identified, dated and recorded.

Test-pits were also dug in several locations, to see if a bronze-age layer could be found; positioning of these trenches was arbitrary, one being located primarily due to the position of shade in the field, in which we were working! These test-pits did not reveal much useful information, but potentially will be a very useful method as more and more of the Zhane valley and river basin are investigated.

While I was at the Zhane Valley project two major discoveries were made. Firstly it was ascertained by measuring the front and back slabs of the dolmen that we were excavating, that it was a dolmen with a façade entrance at the front, in a similar manner to dolmen 2 of the Zhane II group. I was also lucky enough on my last day to discover two dolmens whose location had not previously been recorded.

During my time in the Zhane Valley, as well as learning more about the Caucasian dolmens, and about archaeological fieldwork techniques, my experience showed me many of the problems of working in an area where very little knowledge of the archaeology has already been collected; this is something which I could never have experienced in the United Kingdom where archaeology has a much longer history. This project has filled me with enthusiasm for continuing my studies in Archaeology and Anthropology, and to further develop my knowledge of world prehistory. I am very grateful for the support from the Clare Fell Memorial Bursary, which made it possible for me to partake of such a wonderful opportunity.