Taurian stone crates

Taurian stone boxes - monuments of the ancient Taurian culture, widespread in the Crimea in the VI century. BC e. - I Art. n e, located near the village of Novobobrovskoye ( Balaklava district of the Sevastopol City Council ), which lies in the vast Baidar Valley . In the so-called "Taurus boxes", the Taurs buried their dead. Still these burials date back to the VI — V centuries. BC eh, they are called Crimean dolmens .

You can find stone, immersed in the ground, if you climb north from the village on a dirt road just about a kilometer. On a hill-free part of the hill, covered with grass and bushes, rectangular pits have survived to this day, the walls of which are regular-shaped stone slabs of limestone . In size, the boxes do not exceed 1 m in length, and the walls have a thickness of up to 30 cm.

Ancient tombs stand along one line, and when there were more than a hundred. Now there are only a few dozen. Stone walls made of upright stones and the lids of stone boxes were used by the later inhabitants of the area for construction, so most of the graves were ruthlessly looted.

When studying the ancient necropolis, fragments of ceramics, bones, flints, glass beads, and copper plaques were found.

This ancient place was called by the Tatars Tash-Koy, which translates as "Stone Village". It is possible that the stone houses, which had not yet plunged into the ground, were covered with lids, really resembled a settlement.

In 1947, the Bakhchisaray archaeological detachment of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR established that the group of boxes consisted of 12 pieces, some of which had fences. As a result of excavations, one of the boxes was completely cleared and fragments of stucco ceramics, a trihedral tip of a bronze arrow and a dog's fang were found in it. Excavation materials were transferred to the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR . In the 1960s, the burial ground was investigated by archaeologist A. Shchepinsky. In his work "Kizilkobinskaya Culture and Taurus" on the burial ground " Biyuk-Yankoy " at s. Marble recalls archaeologist H. Chris. She measured all 12 boxes of the Biyuk-Yanka burial ground . The length of the boxes is from 140 to 150 cm, the width is from 90 to 100 cm. Five burials are pits without plates - the plates were dismantled for the construction needs of the village. Only in one box was the 200 x 150 cm floor slab preserved. Two boxes were found to have rectangular fences.