Research of the first detachment of the South Kazakhstan expedition
At the Otrar-tobe settlement, the detachments conducted excavations at the object I, which occupies the territory near the city gates, identified with the gates of Darvaza-i-Sufi written sources.
On a 2600 sq. m excavated building structures, three different periods. Residential and outbuildings of the late (upper) period are poorly preserved. Among the buildings of the second, (middle) period, three groups of buildings are distinguished, separated by courtyards. They consist of residential and commercial buildings. The walls are made of rectangular raw bricks, the most common size of which is 45X20X8-10, 30X12X6, 30X16x6 cm. The preserved height of the walls is 0.5-0.7 m, the thickness is 0.8-1.2 m. Ceilings, flat or gable, rested on wooden poles. The main roofing material was reeds. In the premises there were stoves of the original device. This is a tandoor, which had a firebox, and the chimney was made of raw bricks and led outside. The length of the chimneys is different, from 0.5 to 2 m. Thus, in addition to the fact that bread was baked in the tandoor, it was also a hearth. There were similar tandoors in the yards. It is interesting that the tandoor is necessarily found in combination with a tashnau and a platform paved with burnt bricks and its fragments, while the platform is surrounded by a wall of raw or burnt bricks. Burnt bricks measuring 23x23X4, 18X11X5, 26x26x5 cm were taken from the destroyed buildings of an earlier time. Room sizes from 1.5 to 10 square meters. Next to the tandoors there were khums for grain, there were also chests, the thin walls of which were made of strips of unbaked clay. In total, 32 such tandoors were opened at the facility, and 28 existed at the same time. Half of them were in the yards. The number of tandoors (much more than in other sites of Otrar of equal area), a significant number of fragments of millstones, as well as the presence of a flour warehouse here - a long narrow building with clay chests on the floor, may indicate the production of bread for the market. This is confirmed by the fact that there are small rooms where there were two tandoors at once, paired tandoors, where cakes of different types could be baked, as well as by the fact that more coins were found on the object than on others.
Based on the finds of coins, ceramic complexes collected on the floors of rooms, and metal objects, the lower construction period at site I dates back to the 16th century, and the middle period to the 17th-18th centuries. and upper – 18th-19th centuries.
The detachment was excavating three more objects. In the southern part of the rabad of Otrar, the estate of a craftsman of the 13th-14th centuries was excavated. Several dwellings and a yard with two pottery kilns were unearthed here.
Between the first and second defensive ramparts around the rabad on the bank of the canal, a pottery kiln of the 11th-12th centuries was excavated.
The first shaft was also cut by a trench. Its configuration has been clarified - the fortress wall was built using the technique of combined masonry from pakhsa blocks and raw bricks. There was a parapet at the top. The shaft, judging by the ceramics found, was built in the 10th-12th centuries, the last repair, most likely, was carried out at the end of the 12th-beginning of the 13th century, which fully corresponds to the tense political situation of that time.