Research of the Kok-Mardan settlement

The Kok-Mardan detachment of the South Kazakhstan expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR continued to excavate the layers of the middle of the 1st millennium AD on the Kok-Mardan settlement (Kyzyl-Kum district of Chimkent region). Excavation V (200 sq. m) adjoined excavation II of 1978. The "northern" street was the boundary between them. Remains of six rooms have been found. Three of them were excavated entirely at the level of the second building horizon. A clear architectural plan of the upper (first), poorly preserved building horizon could not be identified.

Usually, there was a rectangular outdoor hearth in the middle of the room, and at the entrance to one of the walls, there was a “fireplace”. Some rooms have piers dividing them into two rooms, an entrance hall and a living room, and sufas along the walls. In the northeast corner of one room there was an altar in the form of an ellipsoidal niche. Pottery is represented by khums, pear-shaped jugs, bowls made on a potter's wheel, often with drip-like decoration with dark paint. Metal objects were found: an ellipsoid-shaped bracelet, a fishing hook, and several fragments of knives.