The mummified remains of the Ice Maiden, a Scytho-Siberian woman who lived on the Eurasian Steppes in the 5th century BC, were found undisturbed in a subterranean burial chamber.

Natalia Polosmak and her team discovered the Ice Maiden during the summer of 1993, when she was a senior research fellow at the Russian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk.

[2] Present day Altai herdsmen still bring their sheep and horses to the plateau during winter, as fierce wind blows snow off the grass providing grazing land for the animals even in freezing temperatures.

Polosmak and her team were guided by a border guard, Lt. Mikhail Chepanov, to a group of kurgans located in a strip of territory disputed between Russia and China.

[5] A shaft dug into the kurgan indicated that this later grave had been robbed, another means by which water and snow entered and seeped into the Ice Maiden's hollow burial chamber.

The water collected, froze, and formed an ice block within the chamber which never fully thawed because of the steppe climate, permafrost, and the rocks piled on top of the mound which deflected the sun's rays.

Inside the Maiden's tomb chamber was her coffin, which was made of a solid larch wood tree trunk decorated with leather appliqués depicting deer figures.

[8] She was buried in a yellow silk tussah blouse, a crimson-and-white striped wool skirt with a tassel belt, thigh-high white felt leggings, with a marten fur, a small mirror made from polished metal and wood with carved deer figures, and a headdress that stood nearly three feet tall.

Despite efforts by the Russian Federation government to undermine regional political agency and the cultural sovereignty of the Altai, the Ice Maiden became a symbol of Altaian identity.

[9] This was used as a reason to keep the mummy in Novosibirsk, and in 2004 the archaeologists who had refused to repatriate the Ice Maiden to the Altai because of her supposed European heritage were awarded the prestigious State Prize of the Russian Federation.