kurgan

¹ American  

[koor-gahn, -gan] / kʊərˈgɑn, -ˈgæn /

noun

1. a circular burial mound constructed over a pit grave and often containing grave vessels, weapons, and the bodies of horses as well as a single human body; originally in use in the Russian Steppes but later spreading into eastern, central, and northern Europe in the third millennium b.c.

---

Kurgan ² American  

[koor-gahn, koor-gahn] / kʊərˈgɑn, kurˈgɑn /

noun

1. a city in the S Russian Federation in Asia, near the Ural Mountains.

---

Kurgan British  

/ kurˈɡan /

noun

1. a city in W Russia, on the Tobol River: industrial centre for an agricultural region. Pop: 344 000 (2005 est)

---

Etymology

Origin of kurgan

1885–90; < Russian kurgán burial mound, Old Russian, apparently to be identified with kurganŭ fortress < Turkic; compare Turkish, Tatar kurğan, Chagatai, Kazakh korğan fortress, castle

Example Sentences

All told, the new paper reports five Yamnaya skeletons displaying at least four of six such traits out of a total of 217 skeletons included in the kurgan survey.

From Scientific American • Mar. 3, 2023

For example, Savur-Mohyla is the site of a Bronze Age burial mound, or kurgan.

From New York Times • Feb. 25, 2022

One of the oldest dates, about 5400 years ago, comes from a horse’s leg bone buried with a small child in a kurgan built by the Maykop culture at Aygurskiy, in southern Russia.

From Science Magazine • Oct. 20, 2021

When the kurgan or mound burial at a site called Koitas was excavated,  from it emerged the bones of a 25-45-year-old man, carbon dated to the 7th to 6th centuries BC.

From Forbes • Jun. 8, 2015

Bronze Age kurgan makers carried their culture and their Indo-European dialects across Europe and as far as China and India, where rich men were buried alongside horse and cattle sacrifices.

From Slate • Jul. 30, 2012