
Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Ağdərə kurqanları (2 ədəd)
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
Overview
Ağdərə kurqanları (2 ədəd) is a megalithic mound in Gazakh District, Azerbaijan. It lies at 41.1710° N, 45.2582° E.
Catalogue recordSources and licences
Article
Ağdərə kurqanları (2 ədəd)
ContextSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
A kurgan is a burial mound built over a grave, often a single body with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, kurgans spread across Central Asia and Eastern, Southeast, Western and Northern Europe during the third millennium BCE. The earliest date to the fourth millennium BCE in the Caucasus, and the Maykop culture there is one of the early sources. Some researchers associate early kurgans with the Indo-Europeans, a debated link; the Yamnaya culture of the steppe is the best known of the steppe cultures that built them. The word comes from a Turkic term meaning fortified place, embankment or high grave. The regional background, “Eurasian kurgans”, is given below.
Dating
No date has been published for this site.
Setting
7 other recorded monuments lie within 10 km (2 within 1 km, 6 within 5 km), 7 of them of the same type. In Gazakh District, Azerbaijan, 8 of the 8 recorded monuments are of this type.
The nearest recorded monuments are Daşlı çökək kurqanları (6 ədəd) (0.1 km south-west, megalithic mound); Yovşanlıtəpə kurqanları (0.3 km north, megalithic mound); Çoban Qurban oğlu kurqanı (1.1 km south-west, megalithic mound); Kurqanlar (2.9 km south, megalithic mound).
ProtectionSources for this section
Sources for this section
Heritage status: cultural heritage monument in Azerbaijan.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Eurasian kurgans
A kurgan is a burial mound built over a grave, often a single body with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, kurgans spread across Central Asia and Eastern, Southeast, Western and Northern Europe during the third millennium BCE. The earliest date to the fourth millennium BCE in the Caucasus, and the Maykop culture there is one of the early sources. Some researchers associate early kurgans with the Indo-Europeans, a debated link; the Yamnaya culture of the steppe is the best known of the steppe cultures that built them. The word comes from a Turkic term meaning fortified place, embankment or high grave.
Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, the Bronze and Iron Ages, antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the tradition is still alive in southern Siberia and Central Asia. The Scythian kurgans of Ukraine and the Pazyryk burials of the Altai are the most famous. The Pazyryk culture, of the sixth to third centuries BCE, buried people under mounds; in the Siberian permafrost the mummies and artefacts were preserved, because the frozen ground kept the burial chambers cold.
Kurgans are dated by their contents, by radiocarbon dating and, where timbers survive, by tree rings.
The Atlas's records in Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia are mostly mounds recorded in archaeological registers. Where a mound has not been excavated, its dating is a range based on form.
When visiting, look for mounds standing alone on the skyline, a sign of a burial placed to be seen from afar, and for groups strung out along a ridge or an old route.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Kurgan, Wikipedia: Yamnaya culture, Wikipedia: Scythians, Wikipedia: Pazyryk culture, Wikipedia: Maykop culture · CC BY-SA 4.0
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.

The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Where it stands
Azerbaijan
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 41°10′16″ N, 45°15′30″ EFor a GPS or map app: 41.17104, 45.25824
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Daşlı çökək kurqanları (6 ədəd)
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Yovşanlıtəpə kurqanları
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Çoban Qurban oğlu kurqanı
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Kurqanlar
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Bərkin ağzı kurqanları
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Kurqanlar (3 ədəd)
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Daş Salahlı kurqanı
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Xoşbulaq Kurgan
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q140659087wikidata.org
Report a correctionWrong date, name, photograph or source? Tell us and it will be put right.
Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Compiled from open records (Wikidata, CC0; OpenStreetMap, ODbL) and a regional background article based on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Wikidata Q140659087CC0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0