Bronze Age phase of the Andronovo culture, kurgans are found, but without differentiation of their grave goods. The corpse was interred in a crouched position or cremated. In the somewhat later Karasuk culture on the middle Yenissei, the tombs include rectangular stone enclosures, which were further developed into the stone-cornered kurgans characteristic of the area by the Tagar culture in the Iron Age. A special position belongs to the early Iron Age Slab Grave culture in the Transbaikal area; their dead were sometimes interred in stone cist graves. The burial of corpses lying on their backs which was practiced in west Siberia continued in the developing Scythian cultures of south Siberia, which is dealt with separately along with the other horse nomad cultures below. Only isolated sanctuaries are known. Among them are the many burnt offering places found near the necropolis of the chalcolithic Afanasevo culture in south Siberia. They consisted of simple stone circles containing ashes, pottery, animal bones and tools made of copper, stone and bone. The many circular buildings containing wooden stakes and walls, in the necropoleis near the early Bronze Age settlement of Sintashta, are probably cult buildings. Iron age steppe people of central and eastern Asia The horse nomads who were characteristic of the Asiatic steppe until modern times are a relatively recent phenomenon. Even in the late second millennium BC, settled pastoralists lived in the arid regions of Central Asia. They were replaced by the early horse nomads in the course of the first millennium BC in ways which are not entirely clear. The transition to the sedentary groups further north was fluid in many places. The inhabitants of the Minusinsk hollow remained settled pastoralists even in the Iron Age, but their cultural development shows strong affinities to the neighbouring nomads. The Xiongnu in Transbaikal region show characteristics of both horse nomads and settled pastoralists and farmers. The situation in northern Tianshan and Zhetysu is remarkable: in the early Iron Age the nomadic Sakas lived there, but the region was subsequently taken over by the sedentary Wusun. The earlier nomadic cultures are referred to collectively by archaeologists using the term "Scythian", which is the ancient Greek term for a group of horse nomads living north of the Black Sea; in a wider sense it referred to all horse nomads in the Eurasian steppe. The third century AD marks the beginning of the Hunnic-Sarmatian period,