Excavations of the Otrar urban quarter

The detachment of the South Kazakhstan Expedition of the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR continued to explore the urban quarter of the 13th-14th centuries in the southwestern part of shakhristan. The quarter (within the excavation) covers an area of ​​1500 sq. m and includes a latitudinal street with a length of about 50 m and a width of 2-2.5 m and residential buildings on both sides of it. All houses are open with passages to the intra-block street and a small alley on the northern side of the block. The rear walls of the houses are blank and form a line of straightened outlines in plan. A small section of the neighboring quarter, located to the south, was also explored in the past season. In total, about 2300 sq. m.

The layout of 12 households was revealed, eight of which include several residential sections. The multi-room (10-12) houses area reaches 250 square meters. Sections isolated from each other are located on both sides of a corridor or two corridors intersecting with axes. There is a variant of a two-row chain of premises. A three-part plan characterizes Single-section houses.

According to the interior details and the method of residential heating premises, two types of houses are distinguished. Premises with an area of ​​10-15 square meters with a sufa on three sides and a small area of ​​paved floor in front of the passage (a tandoor hearth equipped with a chimney is arranged in the sufa), are traditional for residential housing construction in Otrar and southern Kazakhstan as a whole in the period after the Mongol invasion. This type of house persisted until recently. For residential premises of another type, a wide one-sided sufa with a tandoor at the edge (without a chimney) is typical. There are analogies to such buildings in the monuments of the 11th-12th centuries. Workshops were located in two houses next to the living quarters, judging by the remains of small pottery kilns found there. Most of the houses of the quarter were destroyed by a strong fire. The date of this event and the layer as a whole can be specified after identifying two small hoards of silver coins and other finds.

In some excavation areas, the study of the pre-Mongolian layer continued. It has been established that the early walls were used in some places in the laying of walls of a later time, however, in general, the quarter of the post-Mongolian time was formed anew.