Since 2004, the monument "Berel Mounds" has been studied under the national strategic program "Cultural Heritage".
The monument, on the basis of which the museum-reserve "Berel" is created, is located 7 km south-west of the village of the same name of Katon-Karagai district of East Kazakhstan region, Republic of Kazakhstan.
Systematic excavations and interdisciplinary research of Berel necropolis alone gave a unique degree of information archaeological material, allowing to approach to the solution of many topical issues of the history of the region in the 1 millennium BC.
In 1998-2010, 18 burial mounds were excavated, which provided no less valuable materials for the reconstruction of cultural and historical processes that took place in antiquity and the Middle Ages in the Altai subregion. In 2017, an expedition led by Zeinolla Samashev was organized, during which the "Golden Man" was found in the Berel valley. The mound had been heavily looted, and what is there is hard to call a person: it is remains scattered all over the grave. There is no head or limbs. The remains of a headdress, a fur coat, a belt, a ruined vessel. There are gold patches, jewelry from a woman's costume. There are two horses buried near it.
According to more accurate data, there are about 100 mounds and other funerary structures.
