Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Pazyryk burials are a group of Scythian Iron Age tomb mounds, or kurgans, found in the Pazyryk Valley and the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia. The site is close to the borders of China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia and is part of the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The main barrows at Pazyryk, numbered 1-5, are dated to the 4th-3rd centuries BCE. Some nearby sites, such as Katanda, Shibe, and Tuekta, contain burials from the 5th century BCE. Barrow 1 held a funeral chariot also dated to the 5th century BCE.
Water seeped into the wooden burial chambers in antiquity and froze, encasing the burial goods and bodies in ice. The permafrost of the Altai Mountains then kept the contents frozen until excavation. This process preserved organic materials including felt, silk, wooden furniture, human bodies, and tattooed skin.
The tattooed chief from barrow 2 was a powerfully built man, 176 cm tall, who died between the ages of 55 and 60. He was killed with a Scythian-type battle axe and scalped, then carefully embalmed. His body was covered in animal style tattoos depicting creatures including deer, a mountain ram, a fish, running rams, and two monsters resembling griffins.
Archaeologist Natalia Polosmak discovered the Ice Maiden, also called the Altai Lady, in 1993 at the Ukok plateau near the Chinese border. The woman had been buried over 2,400 years ago in a hollowed larch tree casket, accompanied by six sacrificed horses wearing elaborate harnesses.
The Pazyryk rug is considered probably the oldest surviving pile carpet in the world. It measures 183 by 200 cm and has a knot density of approximately 360,000 knots per square meter, higher than most modern carpets. It was found frozen in a block of ice at Pazyryk and is now held at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.