Exploration work in Northern Kazakhstan

A detachment of the North Kazakhstan expedition of the Petropavlovsk Pedagogical Institute conducted reconnaissance in the northern regions of the republic. Approximately 30 monuments of different times were discovered.

To the north of Petropavlovsk on the Ishim River, near Balandino, an Early Bronze Age settlement was discovered with ​​about 5 thousand square meters. Its cultural layer (0.5-0.7 m) is saturated with bones, ceramics, and flint. The pottery is decorated with pit impressions, rows of oblique images of a receding stick. An ornament applied with a comb stamp is less common. The ceramic complex of the monument is close to the materials of the Vishnevka I settlement, dated 3rd - the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.

In the Kokchetav region, a settlement is of interest, located on Lake Zhemantuz near Roshchinskoye, Kellerov district. Its area is about 150-200 thousand square meters, the thickness of the cultural layer is about 1 m. The main part of the monument is located near the water on a gently sloping terrace up to 2 m high. Sites with a less significant cultural layer are recorded at the height of 1.5-2 m from the water's edge. The material from the pits is homogeneous: accumulations of animal bones, ceramics, decorated with impressions of a comb stamp and rope. There are objects of Neolithic appearance among the flint objects, stratigraphically lying below the main finds. The monument belongs to the Eneolithic era and is close to the Botai settlement.

In the Tselinograd region, six Stone Age sites have been recorded on the Selety River and its tributaries. The largest of them is the Neolithic site near the Zholymbet village. From a pit 0.6 m deep, 152 flint objects come from, including several double-sided molds, scrapers, and a petiolate arrowhead. Four Bronze Age settlements and Early Iron Age burial mound (diameter of 50 m, height of about 4 m) were discovered on the Ishim River, near Samarik, in the Atbassar district. The middle and upper reaches of the Tersakkan river were examined in the southern regions of the Tselinograd region (on the border with the Turgai region). Three Bronze Age burial grounds, one Early Iron Age mound and nine Stone Age sites, confined to the first terrace above the floodplain, have been discovered. Only in one case (a site near the “Voskhod” state farm) was the material found on the bedrock bank, on an area of ​​500-700 sq. m. The thickness of the cultural layer here is 0.3 m. The main collection consists of flint microlithoid plates. The presence of plates with a blunt edge, end processing, beveled edge, and a fragment of a trapezoid indicate the Mesolithic age of this site.