A kurgan is a tumulus, a type of burial mound or barrow, heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood. The Russian noun, which is already attested in Old East Slavic, is borrowed from an unidentified Turkic language, compare Modern Turkish kurgan, which means "fortress". These are mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Associated with its use in Soviet archaeology, the word is now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology.