Central Kazakhstan expedition

The Central Kazakhstan Expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR continued excavations of the Late Bronze Age Atasu settlement (Dzhezkazgan region). It is located on an elevated platform at the confluence of the Mynbaisai and Atasu rivers. Two semi-dugouts (165 and 132 sq.m) were excavated in the southwestern part of the settlement (20, 21). One of them (21) is subrectangular, the other is oval; their base is deepened into the ground by 0.4 m. The floors of the premises are compacted soil with traces of clay coating, corridors led from semi-dugouts to powerful ash pans located outside the premises. In the central part of the floor of dwelling 21 there was a domed pottery kiln measuring 1.45 X 1.45 m and 0.4 m high, made of clay and stone. Its floor is lined with two stone slabs. Traces of powerful calcination were noted inside and around the furnace. Nearby, a figure-of-eight pit 0.7 m deep was found. Animal bones, ceramics, stone pestles, polishes, an ore crusher, and copper slags were found in its filling. The eastern wall of the pit has retained the facing of stone slabs. In the upper part of the pit and around it there is a thick layer of ash and traces of intense calcination. In the central part of the dwelling, a rounded pit 1.2 m deep was discovered, the walls of which were reinforced with stone slabs laid flat.

Ceramics in the rooms are varied. Dishes is represented by thick-walled, unornamented cauldron-shaped vessels with a straight rim and rolled ceramics, while tableware is represented by jar-shaped pots, vessels with a smooth neck and shoulder profile, and pots with a ledge in the upper part of the body. There are several miniature flat-bottomed vessels. Often the pots are decorated with oblique notches, incised and stamped ornaments. The comb stamp is most often found in combinations with subtriangular and nail-like impressions, flutes. Occasionally there are vessels of the Begazy type with a high neck and an ornament of large scallops. Among the finds are polished stone pestles, ore crushers, flat graters, burnishers, flint tips with and without a protruding petiole, a ceramic in the form of a spoon with high sides, clay whorls, and a bone cheek-piece with a square hole in the middle. We note a fragment of a bronze sickle, a bracelet, socketed and bullet-shaped arrowheads, a piercing of copper items. The initial date of the studied monuments is the end of the 2nd millennium BC.

Two more have been opened in the Atasu microdistrict; large settlements, consisting of several dozen residential and industrial buildings, chronologically close to the settlement of Atasu.

In the Andronovo burial ground of Ak-Mustafa, three fences were opened, with collective crouched burials. A vessel with a sharp protrusion between the neck and shoulder, a cauldron-shaped pot decorated with two grooves, fragments of ceramics with a transverse ornament, shells from a necklace, a copper ring and a fragment of a bronze item were found here.