Exploration in the Alma-Ata region

The Alma-Ata expedition of the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR and the Republican Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments surveyed the territory of the Dzhambul, Kaskelen, Talgar and Enbekshikazakh regions.

In the floodplains and terraces of river valleys, on the elevated plains of the foothills, numerous gorges of the Trans-Ili Alatau, 115 monuments were identified, surveyed, certified and registered in the lists - the remains of ancient settlements, burial grounds, tombstones and ritual structures, rock paintings, places of individual finds. The overwhelming majority of the monuments belong to the Saka-Usun time (6th-2nd centuries BC). The early cemeteries of this period consist of mounds located strictly in a chain and oriented in the north-south direction. The mounds of the later kurgan groups are located haphazardly. The smallest group of monuments are fences of the ancient Turkic period. These are low stone mounds, square or rectangular layouts, fences with a stone stele or statue.