Horse burial is the practice of burying a horse as part of the ritual of human burial, and is found among many Indo-European speaking peoples and others, including Chinese and Turkic peoples. The act indicates the high value placed on horses in the particular cultures and provides evidence of the migration of peoples with a horse culture. Human burials that contain other livestock are rare; in Britain, for example, 31 horse burials have been discovered but only one cow burial, unique in Europe. This process of horse burial is part of a wider tradition of horse sacrifice. An associated ritual is that of chariot burial, in which an entire chariot, with or without a horse, is buried with a dead person.
Mass horse burial for Duke Jing of Qi (reigned 547–490 BCE) of Spring and Autumn period China
Sketch plan of the kurgan burial at Kostromskaya in southern Russia
The Wulfsen horse burial shown in situ
Remains of the horse burial in Mound 17, Sutton Hoo
Horse sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of a horse, usually as part of a religious or cultural ritual. Horse sacrifices were common throughout Eurasia with the domestication of the horse and continuing up until the spread of Abrahamic religions, or in some places like Mongolia, of Buddhism. The practice is rarely observed in some cultures even today.
Skull of a horse sacrificed by multiple sword blows during the Iron Age (4-500 AD), found in Nydam Engmose, Denmark, at the Zoological Museum, Copenhagen
A 19th-century painting, depicting the preparation of army to follow the Ashvamedha sacrificial horse. Probably from a picture story depicting Lakshmisa's Jaimini Bharata
Reconstruction of a sacrificed horse and two dogs (570-600 AD) from Povegliano Veronese
Illustration of the Irish horse sacrifice taken from Topographia Hibernica, c. 1220