Research in the Aktobe region
The Aktobe Regional Museum of Local Lore expedition detachment conducted protection excavations in the Aktobe region. The burial mounds in the Kyzyl-Zhar, Zhaman-Kargala II and East Kurailin II-III groups were studied.
The burial ground Kyzyl-Zhar was located on arable land on the left bank of the Ilek, 2-2.5 km north-north-west of the village of Khlebodarovsky. It consisted of three mounds, elongated from the northwest to the southeast. Earth mounds with a stone in the embankment. Two barrows have been excavated. In one of them, a burial was found at the level of the buried soil of at least five dead (the burials were destroyed by annual plowing). In the center of the mound of the second barrow, in a wide oval grave pit at a depth of 2 m from the level of the buried soil, a three-tiered burial of a woman and two men was made. The pit is filled with stones. The inventory of burial mounds (bronze mirrors, arrowheads, stone altars, blue glass beads, an iron dagger, etc.) dates back to the end of the 6th-5th centuries BC.
The burial mounds of the Zhaman-Kargala II group were located on arable land, on the right bank of the Zhaman-Kargala River, 3 km to the north-west - west of the village of Kargalinskoye. All four barrows have been excavated; three earth mounds, one stone in the embankment. The dimensions of the embankments vary from 6 to 15 m in diameter and from 0.13 to 1 m in height. Earth mounds were erected in the Late Bronze Age, in one of them, three inlet burials of the Sauromatian-Sarmatian time were made. Mound 4 belonged to the Sarmatian period and was excavated by I.A. Kastanye at the beginning of the 20th century. Bronze Age burials provided interesting material. Coal was traced in all the mounds above them. In subsquare grave pits approximately 2x3 m in size, covered with wooden poles, at a depth of 0.6 to 1.5 m, four adults and one child were buried on the left side. The inventory is diverse: bone whorls, mutton alchiks, flat-bottomed clay molded vessels, copper items (knives, adzes, needles, awls, spearheads, etc.). An interesting feature of the burials is the presence in one case in three, in the other in two corners of the grave of smooth polished stones of unclear purpose.
Eight earthen and stone burial mounds of the Bronze Age and Sarmatian times have been excavated in the Vostochnokurailinskiye II and III burial grounds, located on the right bank of the Ilek, 1 and 1.5 km east of the village of Kuraili. All mounds have been robbed. Modeled vessels, fragments of modeled ceramics, and bone bow linings were found.