Archaeologists in Russia have discovered a rare elite burial of a medieval woman who was accompanied in death by a newborn child and a flayed horse. A mirror and silver stirrup found in the grave were decorated in the style of Chinese art, revealing multicultural connections in 10th-century Asia.

"It's quite clear that this is far from an ordinary burial," Andrey Poliakov, an archaeologist and director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for the History of Material Culture, who led the excavation, said in a translated statement. "There are no more than a few dozen similar burials in the entire Sayan-Altai region" in Inner Asia.