Kurgan: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

A kurgan is a type of burial mound heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood, that was characteristic of Bronze Age nomadic peoples of the steppes, from the Altai to the Caucasus and Romania. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, members of the elite were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horse-sacrifices.

They are also called Burial mounds or tumuli and the custom was in use until the 11th century in Scandinavia. In their undamaged state they appear as small, man-made hillocks, though many examples have been damaged by ploughing or deliberately damaged so that little visible evidence remains.

Sometimes, burial mounds are quite complex structures with internal chambers. The bodies of important or wealthy people, together with grave goods were placed in such graves out of respect or for religious reasons.

In 1956 Marija Gimbutas introduced her "Kurgan hypothesis" combining archaeology from the distinctive "Kurgan' burial mounds with linguistics to unravel the problem of the origins of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples. She tentatively named the culture "Kurgan" and traced its migrations into Europe. This hypothesis, and the act of bridging the disciplines, has had a significant impact on Indo-European research.

Those scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a Kurgan people as an early Indo-European ethnicity which existed in the steppes and southeastern Europe from the fifth to third millennia BCE.

Some excavated kurgans

• Krasnodar region of southern Russia, ca 2700 - 2200 BCE
• Scythian, ca 275 - 250 BCE (unusually late), at Ryzhanovka, south of Kiev, Ukraine

In the film Highlander, a "Kurgan" (Clancy Brown) is one of the enemies of the protagonist.