Research in the Talas Valley and Kuyruktobe settlement

The Taraz expedition of the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR continued to study Taraz (the territory of the city of Dzhambul) and the monuments of the Talas Valley under the program "Historical and cultural monuments of the Dzhambul region." A group of medieval settlements with "long steppes" has been discovered. Most of them were known before, but only now, after a detailed study of the terrain and decoding of aerial photographs, it was possible to reveal their topography, a characteristic feature of which is the presence of long walls surrounding the territory adjacent to the city with traces of buildings and agricultural land. A compact group of such settlements is located 30-40 km north of Dzhambul and is concentrated along the Karasu rivers of spring origin. These are the settlements of Choltobe, Karatortkultobe, Konurbaitobe, Zhantobe. They are dated within the 6th - early 12th century, and Karatortkultobe survived until the 14th century. Excavations at the citadel of Choltobe uncovered two rooms of the building block of the 11th-12th centuries. The mudbrick walls stood on flagstone foundations. Tandoors were found on the premises. A powerful layer of fire was recorded - the remains of a charred ceiling on the floors, burnt plaster of the walls. An interesting complex of ceramics forms typical for the Talas Valley - anthropomorphic jugs, cauldrons with plums, dishes inlaid with colored glass balls.

An urban necropolis was excavated in the ancient settlement of Kostobe, located 15 km northeast of Dzhambul. Two 2.5x1.5 m adobe bricks (48x24x8 cm) were unearthed. Skeletons were cleared on the floors, in one there was a skull and a bunch of bones. The ceramics of the burials (jugs, cauldrons) date back to the 6th-8th centuries. The uppermost (latest) burials in the necropolis were made according to the Muslim rite in crypts made of mud-brick taken from the walls of the earlier time. The buried are oriented with their heads to the northwest; there are no grave goods.

At the settlement of Kuyruktobe, work continued clearing the main hall of the palace of the 7th - the first half of the 9th century. On the citadel along the floor level, on which lay the remains of a burnt ceiling and a wooden carved frieze that once adorned the walls of the hall. Several large fragments of boards from the frieze were cleared and fixed. On one of them, the figure of a man with a flower in his hand has been preserved. Fragments of carved wooden parts were raised - these are images of rosettes, plant shoots, rhombuses. Excavations of houses of the 9th-10th centuries found out their layout, which differed from the layout of houses of a later time by the presence of two rooms attached to the living room and located along the same axis, pantries. The steppes of the premises are not plastered, layers of manure are found on the floors.

The living rooms of the houses have a traditional interior, which is also characteristic of a later time. There were sufas along the walls, in the center there was a rectangular or oval hearth with a border and two molded bumps for placing a pot. One of the corners was used for making bread. There was also a mill station and bins for grain and flour. Ceramics metal products date back to the 9th-10th centuries.

An interesting find is a ceramic mask-mask with the designations of eyes, mouth, and a poorly modeled nose.