Research in the Otrar oasis and Talas valley

The Kuyruk detachment of the South Kazakhstan expedition of the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR conducted excavations of two monuments of the Otrar oasis: the agricultural settlement of southern Kostobe and the settlement of Kuyryktobe (medieval Kerder).

A residential area was unearthed on Kostobe, consisting of closely attached one-, two- and three-room houses, characterized by the presence in the living quarters of P- and G-shaped rectangular sufa, hearths with sides and fireplaces. In the storerooms, there were clay containers and large khum for storing grain. Pottery collected on the floors of the rooms (mugs, jugs with zoomorphic handles, goblets, khums with signs) dates back to the 3rd-5th centuries. Of interest is a partially preserved light-engobed vessel with a cherry-painted frieze in the form of stepped pyramidal figures, above which are depicted a deer and, below, a rearing horse and anthropomorphic masks. A round clay seal was also found there.

On Kuiruktobe, the study of urban quarters of the 10th-11th centuries continued. Two-room houses here had one dwelling with a sufa around the perimeter, a tandoor on a pedestal, a hearth with a side and two protrusions-knobs. In the corners of the living rooms, usually next to the tandoor, there were utility areas fenced with sides, which served for making bread. Their surface was carefully smeared with clay. In the same place, pits from dug-in vessels and the remains of stationary stands for millstones were cleared.

Iron-smelting workshops were excavated on the territory of the rabad. The complex and residential buildings included premises and yards with smelting furnaces, where raw bloomery iron was smelted. Finds of ceramics and coins, among which are noted rare ones, including the Miri (coins) of Suyurgatmysh and Timur 785 AH, Mahmud and Timur 790 and 793 AH, Muhammad Dzhehangir and Khalil-Sultan, minted in Samarkand, allow us to date the iron smelters to the end 14th - the beginning of the 15th century. However, pits in some rooms established that the formation of the metallurgists' quarter dates back to the end of the 13th-14th centuries. The complex of ceramics and coins of the Chagataids date back to this period. The excavations of the workshops allow once again to be convinced of the economic and political rise of the South Kazakhstan cities in the last third of the 14th - the first half of the 15th century.      

The reconnaissance detachment of the Taraz expedition of the named Institute examined the foothill and steppe parts of the Talas valley to check the current state of archaeological sites, mainly settlements, search for new ones, their examination, and dating. One of the most important results of these works should be discovering a large group of settlements in the first half of the 1st millennium AD. If earlier only single monuments of this time were known in the valley, now they are found next to almost every large medieval settlement. Among them, the settlement of Choldala, located on the left bank of the Assy River, not far from the settlement of Dzhuvantobe, identified with the medieval Atlakh, is promising for stationary studies. Cut through by a modern canal, it has a thickness of cultural lay of 4.5 m and is attributed to the circle of monuments of kaunchy cultures.

Among the previously unknown medieval settlements, the Urnek settlement of the 8th - early 13th century is of interest. It is located in the foothills of the Kyrgyz Range and covers an area of ​​at least 100 hectares. Judging by the finds of slag, stone tools, and devices, it was a settlement of metallurgists. It should be noted that at one time, a workshop for making stone sculptures was discovered nearby in the gorge and that a fragment of a stone column and a stele with horned protrusions come from the settlement itself.

Among the finds received by the regional local history museum from the territory of Dzhambul (the medieval Taraz), we note a mask carved from sandstone from the area of ​​the former flour bazaar, where the Zoroastrian necropolis was located in the early Middle Ages.