Research in the Koksu River Valley

The expedition detachment of the Kazakh Pedagogical Institute and the Kazproekt Restoration Institute continued work in the Taldy-Kurgan region in the valley of the Koksu River, which began in 1982. Two settlements of the Bronze Age, five burial grounds of the same era, and several thousand rock carvings were found in the gorges of the Eshkiolmes ridge.

On the right bank of the river, 1 km north of Talapty, on the cape of the terrace, there is the settlement of Kuigan I of the Late Bronze Age. A dwelling of a subrectangular shape was revealed. The cultural layer is saturated with animal bones and ceramics. A bronze single-edged knife with a separate handle, a hole on it, and a beveled blade was found. Knives of a similar shape in the Late Bronze Age sites of Eastern, Central, Northern Kazakhstan, the Turksib hoard, etc., dating back to the 12th-9th centuries BC. The ceramic material is represented by fragments of jar vessels and pot-shaped types, decorated with patterns made with a comb stamp and cutting. Among the ornament motifs, a rhombic mesh combined with rows of flutes, pitting, herringbone, nail, triangular impressions predominate. There are many fragments of roller ceramics.

2.3 km northwest of Talapy, at the foot of the ridge on a narrow terrace, there is a settlement of Talapy I, the southern border of which is significantly destroyed by a cliff. An exploration excavation revealed a structure

the foundation of the eastern wall of the ground-dwelling in the form of masonry of medium-sized stones laid in a row along the north-south line. In the household pits below the floor level, in addition to fragments of ceramics, handicrafts made of bone were found, and in pit 6, a fragment of a sickle of the Sosnovo-Mazinsky type, slightly curved, with a hole in the handle, was found. The identified forms of vessels (pot-shaped and spherical), ornamental elements on them (“pearls”, flutes along the neck of the vessels, a nail stamp) make it possible to determine the age of the settlement. The same date is confirmed by analogies with the pottery of the Trushnikovo period, which, like in the pottery of the Talanty settlement, is characterized by vessels with a straight or slightly bent neck and swollen body, decorated with oblique impressions, tucks along the rim and neck of the vessel.

The Late Bronze Age is also dated to several plots of the rock carvings of the Eshkiolmes sanctuary, which are established by plot and stylistic analysis and analysis of depicted realities (arrowheads, chasers).