Arzhan[a] is a site of early Saka kurgan burials in the Tuva Republic, Russia, some 60 kilometers (40 mi) northwest of Kyzyl.

[citation needed] The excavations showed burials with rich grave goods including horses and gold artifacts.

[7] The builders created two central pits that were fake graves to throw off looters, and the main burial was 20 meters off-center.

They displayed a combination of "Caucasoid" and "Mongoloid" features, the Queen having especially high and prominent cheekbones.

[24] Etched carnelian beads, a technology originally developed in India in the 3rd millennium BCE, and probably manufactured in Iran or Central Asia where found in the tomb of Arzhan-2, suggesting trade exchanges with the south.

[25] Gold inlays to decorate iron and bronze objects were used by the nomads of Eurasia from the 7th century BCE, starting with the battle axe and the arrowheads found at Arzhan-2.

This technique continued to be in use from the 6th to the 4th century CE in a much wider area, as with the gold-inlaid knife handle of the of Shibe barrow in Southern Siberia, or the gold-inlaid plates of the Tasmola culture, as far as the southern Urals in the Late-Sauromatian Filippovka kurgans.

[26] In 2017, the large royal burial mound Tunnug 1 (Arzhan 0), which dates to the same period as Arzhan-1, was investigated by a Russian-Swiss expedition.

[citation needed] Arzhan has been a key element in archaeological evidence that now tends to suggest that the origins of Scythian culture, characterized by its kurgan burial mounds and its Animal style of the 1st millennium BC, are to be found among Eastern Scythians rather than their Western counterparts: eastern kurgans are older than western ones (such as the Altaic kurgan Arzhan 1 in Tuva), and elements of the Animal style are first attested in areas of the Yenisei river and modern-day China in the 10th century BCE.

[37] The Scythian king buried in the royal burial mound of Arzhan 2 is an ancestor of 45% of modern Kyrgyz, belonging to the Y-haplogroup R1a-Z2125.

[38] Also from the Arzhan settlement was published a DNA sample S441, belonging to the Scythian culture of the 7th—6th century BC, which are ancestral to the Kyrgyz branch.