Head of the Tuvan Government and director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovski decided that the treasures from the the burial mound (kurgan) Arzhan-2 will go on being kept on the Hermitage. Temporarily, while the new building of the Tuvan museum where the artefacts were to be on show is still under construction. In summer 2001 researchers unearthed the richest early Scythian burial site not only in Siberia but in the entire steppe zone of Eurasia. The excavations were carried out by the Central Asian Archeological Expedition created by the St Petersburg Branch of the Russian Research Institute into the Cultural and Natural Science Heritage under the RF Ministry of Culture and the Russian Academy of Sciences together with the Eurasian Section of the German Archeological Institute in Berlin and its director Professor Herman Parzinger as well as Dr. Anatolii Nagler. The excavation work was led by the head of the Central Asian Expedition, Konstantin V.Chugunov.