Explorations in the Bien River Valley

A detachment of the Semirechye expedition of the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR investigated the Bronze Age (settlement and burial ground) complex in the Kapal district of Taldy-Kurgan region.

The Bien settlement is located on the left bank of the Bien River near the dam site. Part of the settlement was destroyed during construction. The excavation site (459 sq. m.) was laid out 300 m from the dam on a small promontory, where the stone foundations of the walls of six rounded dwellings were noted, and ceramics were collected in the river cliff. The remains of four interconnected living quarters have been excavated. A cliff destroyed three rooms, the fourth (area 136 sq. m., depth 0.3-0.35 m) is two-chamber. The dwelling walls are made of large boulders, the stones of the outer walls are reinforced on the mainland with the help of clay coating. Inside, there were ground hearths, bonfires, and central pillar pits, indicating the yurt-like dwellings' construction. The settlement is single-layer, the thickness of the cultural layer is 0.25-0.40 m.

The materials are represented by a copper needle, an iron object (an arrowhead?), stone bone products. The main part of the finds are fragments of ceramics, similar to the vessels of the final bronze of Kazakhstan, i.e., Sargara and Begazy-Dandybai types.

The burial ground is located 800 m upstream. On 259 sq. m, 11 soil burials were found, oriented along the east-west and north-south lines. Tombstones are solid rectangular or round boulders; round enclosures of boulders laid in two or three layers are less common. The method of burial is inhumation. Nine graves have been robbed and only two are undisturbed. In one (1) there is a crouched skeleton of a child on the left side, head to the west, a vessel near the knees. In another (11) a woman with a child is buried. The woman was lying prone, with her head to the west, her arms bent, her head resting on the crook of her left arm, her legs were also bent and placed on the left side. The skeleton is painted with ocher, under it there are traces of calcination, in the filling of the pit there are charcoal. The woman was wearing bronze jewelry (a ring pendant, bracelet fragments) and white paste beads. Behind her was a vessel.

In total, 13 vessels were found in the burial ground, identical to the ceramics of the village of Bien. The settlement and the burial ground date back to the final Bronze Age (10th-8th centuries BC). Perhaps they belong to the transitional period. The features of similarity inherent in the Bien 13 burial ground and the Vuadil burial ground in the Ferghana Valley are noted.