Burials from BesinshItobе in the Otrar oasis

Excavations of the Besinshitobe settlement in the Otrar oasis. The monument is based on the ruins of an architectural structure of the Kangyu period, in the swamp and blockage of which the graves of the deceased were made. Systematic study of it began in 2015 and continues to the present. During four field seasons, about 50 burials were identified, 19 of them were discovered and opened in 2018. All of them are represented by inlet burials in simple pits without additional structures. It was not always possible to trace the shape of the grave pit, but in most cases it had a narrow oblong shape with rounded corners. According to the rite, these burials differ. There are burials without accompanying inventory, burials in clay vessels placed in grave pits and burials with inventory. The earliest are burials with accompanying inventory. The orientation of the backbone with its head to the northwest and northwest with a slight deviation to the north, as well as the absence of accompanying inventory, allows us to consider the burials of the first group muslim. Most of these graves date back to the Karakhanid period, the rest tentatively belong to the XIII–XV centuries. In 2015 , the archaeological team M. Auezov South Kazakhstan State University has started excavations at the Besinshitobe settlement. The work of the first field season (trench I) allowed us to identify here the remains of a large monumental structure of the beginning of the I millennium AD, erected on a mud-brick platform. In 2016 and 2017, excavation work was carried out on the upper site of the hillock (excavations I and II). The south-western wall of the central structure is traced in length by 2.5 m, the north-western wall by more than 9 m. When opening the western and north-western sections of the central part of the ancient building 29 different-time intake burials were discovered. All of them were committed in pits let into the ruins of this structure. Thus, the burial structures of the Besinshitobe burial ground are represented by the same type of simple burial pits, in which burials were placed, and burials in clay vessels. According to the nature of funeral rites, they can be divided into three groups: uninventional burials of the IX–XII and XIII–XV centuries, burials in clay vessels of the VII–VIII centuries and burials with accompanying inventory of the IV–V centuries.