Archaeological exploration in Central Kazakhstan

The object of the work was the sites in the Pavlodar (Irtysh), Kokchetav (Ishim) region, and on the northern outskirts of the Betpak-Dala desert.

The first site is located among small hills with grass-wormwood-saltwort vegetation, 60 km east of the city of Ekibastuz, Pavlodar region. Here, mainly near springs and takyrs, eight Neolithic localities have been discovered, including Kosterek 1, Takyrsor 1-4, Taskuduk 2-4. In addition, at the top of a small hill covered with nodules and angular fragments of draining sandstone, the Late Paleolithic workshop Taskuduk 1 was discovered. The inventory consists of eight double-sided disc cores, three double-sided cores, 55 fragments of leaf-shaped tips 113-214 mm long, seven fragments of triangular ax-shaped tools, two points, four side-scrapers, 18 blades, 254 flakes with faceted backs and over 120 fragments of spalls.

The second site is located 130 km west of Kokchetav. Here, on the pasture of the village of Kazanka, along the banks of swampy places and hummocky lakes, rich in fish and waterfowl, three Neolithic sites, small in area and in the number of finds, were discovered. The inventory is represented by cores, sections of blades, scrapers on flakes. Two small sites (Neolithic and Bronze Age) were found on a high left-bank terrace of the Iman-Burluk river, 4 km south of the village of Olginka. Among the finds, flakes predominate.

Archaeological exploration in the south of the Karaganda region was crowned with great success and along the banks of the desert rivers Kaimpbergen-Karasu (one point) and Zhideli (three points) that dry up in summer, near springs between the Munglu and Kylcha hills (three points), on an unnamed hill 14 km south of the Koskuduk well (three points) and at Azat mountains (one point). The sites, as a rule, are of considerable size, very rich in stone tools of an undoubtedly Neolithic appearance. 

The Late Paleolithic workshop Koskuduk 7 was also discovered in a small area on the northern slope of the above-mentioned nameless hill. The finds are represented by 10 single-platform one-sided cores, six disc-shaped double-sided cores, six prismatic cores, 45 fragments of amorphous cores, and over 170 fragments of spalls. Finished tools were not found.