# Millet porridge from the 2nd–3rd century, cooked in goat milk, found in a Southern Urals kurgan

- Published: 2026-11-14 00:59 UTC
- Section: Science › Research
- Tags: millet porridge, Southern Urals archaeology, Magnitny cemetery, kurgan 21, 2nd–3rd century, starch analysis, lipid analysis, microtomography, nomads, goat milk
- URL: https://realtech.media/news/rt-2229292bb80e516c677b6f8c_millet_porridge_from/

**A bronze cauldron from a woman's burial at the Magnitny cemetery held cooked common millet, the first documented grain find among Southern Urals nomads.**

![Millet porridge from the 2nd–3rd century, cooked in goat milk, found in a Southern Urals kurgan](https://realtech.media/media/2026/11/a6ac675b25c98919.jpg)
*science.mail.ru*

Archaeologists have described millet porridge from the 2nd–3rd century found in the Southern Urals, according to science.mail.ru, citing the press service of South Ural State University (SUSU). Ksenia Margaryan, a researcher at SUSU's Research and Education Center for Eurasian Studies, presented the find at a round table at the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. [1] Millet was cultivated in China eight to ten thousand years ago, but until now there were no documented finds of grains among the nomads of the Southern Urals steppes.

## Where the porridge was found

The burial in kurgan 21 of the Magnitny cemetery in the Agapovsky district was excavated in 2010. A woman, probably a priestess, was buried there. Beside her lay vessels from provinces of the Roman Empire, gold jewelry with garnets, a glass cup, and a bronze cauldron holding a lump of organic matter and a wooden spoon. [1] The items are kept in the Peoples and Technologies of the Urals museum at SUSU. The food was most likely placed in the grave for the afterlife.

## What the analyses showed

At first the grain structure could not be distinguished. The Ural archaeologists turned to Irina Pantyukhina and Elena Sergusheva of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They found common millet, boiled but more likely steamed. A computed microtomograph revealed traces of decayed grains, and some caryopses survived. [1] Starch analysis also identified plants of the Amaranthaceae family and starch of a cereal of the tribe Triticeae. Some grains were hulled, but most were not.

Lipid analysis at the Kurchatov Institute showed that the porridge was cooked in goat milk. [1] Fifteen years passed between the excavation and these conclusions.

Margaryan notes that hulled millet spoils quickly, and the nomads may not have handled hulling very well. In her words, such a product was probably not available to everyone. She does not rule out that it was imported from Central Asia, or grown there in fields before the move to the summer pastures of the Southern Urals.

## Sources

1. [science.mail.ru](https://science.mail.ru/news/60533-drevnejshaya-pshennaya-kasha)

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Source: RealTech, realtech.media — https://realtech.media/news/rt-2229292bb80e516c677b6f8c_millet_porridge_from/