MOSCOW(BullionStreet): Russia announced further plans to search for the Scythian gold in the country's far east.

The Russian Geographical Society (RGS) will lead search parties in Tuva and to examine the New Siberian Islands.

There are straits under the ice there that have not been explored yet. Another volunteer expedition to Siberian Tuva will be the most large-scale project of the Russian Geographical Society this year.

However, ahead of construction work scientists and volunteers from 28 countries will examine all barrows and ancient settlements there. Since the major recovery more than a decade ago, Russia is yet to strike it rich with Scythian gold.

Almost 5,000 decorative gold pieces, earrings, pendants and beads -- that adorned the bodies of a Scythian man and woman, presumably royalty, and dated from the fifth or sixth centuries B.C were found from the dig near Kyzyl, the capital of the Siberian republic of Tuva.

Research on the Tuva burial mound, known as Arzhan 2, began in 1998, and to the amazement of scholars the grave was discovered to be untouched, though failed attempts by grave robbers to locate the burial chamber were evident on the sprawling, 185-foot-long, 5-foot-high mound.

Scythians are nomadic tribes lived from the seventh to the 3rd century BC across the vast sweep of grasslands that stretched from the Carpathian Mountains in eastern Europe to Mongolia, more than 4,000 miles away.

They were astonishingly among the ancient world’s most extravagant art patrons.

Since the Scythians believed, like the Egyptians, that they could take their wealth with them into the afterlife. Thousands of these burial sites, or kurhans are found across Russia and have yielded a wealth of treasures, including priceless masterpieces of solid gold.