The kurgans of Pazyryk, in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia, yielded the burials of noblemen who had been buried there in the fourth and third centuries BC. The tombs included many textiles, including Chinese silks with embroideries. The first of the barrows (kurgans) was excavated in 1929; others were studied between 1947 and 1949 by Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko.