Diachronous Settlement on the Territory of the Turgay Trough

Abstract

The article introduces into the scholarship the collection of findings of prehistoric material culture obtained at Bestamak during the stationary studies of 2001 field season. The total area of the archaeological site is 260,000 m2. It was excavated by Turgay expedition in the 1980s. Bestamak settlement is situated on the Turgay trough connecting the West Siberian and Turan plains. In the west, the Turgay trough is bounded by the Trans-Ural Plateau; in the east — by the Kazakh upland and spurs of the Ulutau mountains. Natural and geographical features of Turgay trough allow for their cultural layers to mainly contain diachronous material, with Bestamak serving as an example. Due to this specificity, the collections of stone industry discovered in the monuments of the Turgay trough should be studied on the basis of technical and typological analysis, the main parameters of which being products of primary cleavage; morphological parameters of the plates, the size of plates and tools on the plates; percentage ratio of ingots and tools from plates and rock flakes; secondary processing methods; typological composition of tool kit. The composition of raw materials is used as an independent indicator. In the course of the research, the author concluded that the primary cleavage, nuclei “rejuvenation” and secondary processing of blanks were performed on the site of the settlement. Judging by the results of the technical and typological analysis, the stone industry was deposited from the end of the Mesolithic-the Early Neolithic to the Late Eneolithic. The Neolithic stone industries, starting from the early and late Eneolithic, are predominant at Bestamak. The presence of Mesolithic and Early Eneolithic stone industries on the site is just an assumption. Fragments of ceramics and metal products suggest that people stayed at Bestamak until Late Bronze.