The article deals with the materials of one of the graves discovered during the emergency excavation of the monument at the Nagornoe Cemetery in the city of Barnaul in the autumn of 2015. The silver gilded badge of a mining engineer found in the tomb is of great interest for the restoration of the mining history in Altai and biographies of Mining Engineers. The sign is a faleristic rarity as the right to wear such badges belonged to the graduates of the only one in the Russian Empire Mining Institute in St. Petersburg. The employees of mining plants with higher education belonged to the upper class in the table of ranks and occupied fairly high positions. The analysis of the legislation of the Russian Empire, faleristic collections and sign’s manufacturing features allowed the authors to rank it among other academic signs introduced in the reign of Alexander II for military academies graduates according to the Law of May 14, 1866 № 43394. Thus, a badge allows defining extreme burial dates and is an important marker to determine the background and prospects of identification of a buried mining engineer.