B.E. Petri’s lost collection: excavations of the Tunkinsky burial ground

The article presents the materials of collection No. 192, stored in the Irkutsk Museum of Regional Studies. There is no documentation for the collection. One of the options for forming a collection is considered. It has been concluded that most of the things presented in it are the accompanying inventory of burials excavated in the mid-1920s by B.E. Petri in the Tunka Valley at the Mondy 1 burial ground. The collection includes weapons, horse equipment, clothing and household items. The inventory is described, its typology is given. It is noted that two pairs of stirrups included in collection No. 192 are depicted in photographs of burials excavated by B.E. Petri, and published in the monograph by A.P. Okladnikov “Essays from the history of the Western Buryat-Mongols (XVII-XVIII centuries)”. The book contains photographs of two human burials and a ritual burial of a ram. The skeletons are located in wooden decks with rounded ends. The corpse was elongated, on the back, the hands rested on the hips. In the first burial, one of the stirrups was located between the legs of the buried, and the second was on the edge of the deck. In the second burial, both stirrups are located outside the deck, to the left of the buried. Both graves excavated by B.E. Petri, can be attributed to the burials of the Sayantui type, which characterize the funeral ritual of the Mongols of the imperial period (XIII-XIV centuries). Most of the items from collection No. 192 date from this time. Of the items listed by A.P. Okladnikov, discovered by B.E. Petri, the collection currently lacks Chinese bronze mirrors, the remains of lacquered saddles, pearls, silver and gold jewelry, whistles from arrowheads and a silver bowl on a high leg.

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