Continued excavations at Atasu

The Central Kazakhstan Expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR began excavations of the central part of the Bronze Age settlement Atasu I in the Agadyr district of the Dzhezkazgan region.

The excavation (480 sq.m.) covered three depressions adjoining the “big house” of the settlement, explored by A. Kh. Margulan in 1955, from the northeast side. Their bases, round in plan, were sunk into the ground by 40–50 cm. Pillars 16–20 cm in diameter and up to 20 cm deep, found at the bottom of all three rooms, followed the outline of these buildings. The dimensions of the first (western) room are 9.7 X 8.0 m, the second - 9.5х9.0 m, the third - 7х6 m. Ceramics are dominated by cauldron-shaped kitchen utensils with a straight rim and a dining room, which is represented by jar pots, vessels with a smooth and stepped profile of the neck and shoulder. The ornament is a soft and comb stamp combined with flutes, short notches and subtriangular impressions.

Among other things, we note stone pestles and mortars for crushing ore, bone and stone arrowheads, a bronze knife, bone rattles, ceramic crucibles, stone hoes. Of particular interest is discovering four copper-smelting furnaces in the form of cone-shaped pits, the upper edges of which are lined with stone slabs. The first copper smelter was found inside the western room. The pit's diameter along the upper edge is 1.5 m, the depth is 1.3 m. The walls of this and other furnaces have preserved clay coating 2.5–3 cm thick. fire. The second and third ovens were located in vestibules to the northern and eastern walls of the western building. The northern foundry had a round chimney (50x50 cm) lined with stone tiles. It was like a low pipe, one end of which was connected to the upper part of the pit, and the other end went obliquely to the northwestern side of the excavation. The third pit is shallower, its dimensions on top are 1.15х1.2M, and the depth is 0.8m. At the bottom of the chamber there is a small depression for copper drainage. In the northern part, at the upper edge of the pit, the mouth of the blower channel has been preserved. The channel itself, which spirally encircled the western wall of the pit, had a width of 18–20 cm and a depth of 8–10 cm. Like all the walls of the chamber, it was coated with clay. In the filling of all three furnaces, in addition to the fragments of ceramics that got here as a result of the destruction of the cultural layer, pieces of slag, ores, and drop-shaped ingots of copper were found.

The fourth copper smelter was located in an isolated square building between the second and third semi-dugouts. The top diameter of the kiln is 1.6 m, the depth is 1.4 m. The same type of air duct started at the northern edge of the pit, covered the middle part of the western wall and went down in a sharp bend into the hearth of the kiln. At least 30 kg of copper ore was preserved in the pit. Its pieces (4 x 7; 6 x 8 cm) were pressed into a layer half a meter thick. Judging by the traces of fire on the ore, the furnace was loaded for smelting set on fire, but then for some reason, the smelting was never carried out.