Archaeological sights of Kostanay region.

"There is no people in the world descended from one ancestor."

B. Irmukhanov.

Historical and cultural monuments of Kostanay region.

The Alekseevsky archaeological complex of the III millennium BC is located at an altitude of 144 meters above sea level, located 680 meters from the right bank of the main channel of the Tobol River, in the southern part of the city of Rudny, in the Kostanay region.
Monuments of the Bronze Age of the 18th - 8th centuries BC located on the territory of Kazakhstan: Akhmedaul, Besbay, Tysty-Butak, Prirechny, Sadchikovskoye. Alekseevskoye, Zatobolskoye, Novonikolskoye, Chaglinka, Tankeris, Akmola, Semipalatinsk, Algabas, Boribas, Atasu, Dandybai.
Every big and small city has its own memorable places, which, like precious relics, the people must protect. Archaeological objects can not be found everywhere, but only in places associated with the life and burial of people in the past.
Such places are called archaeological sites. The most common are settlements. On the settlements, in the ground there are the remains of dwellings, tools (depending on the era to which the monument belongs).
An equally important type of monuments are burials representing graves and mounds. Burials are accompanied by various items: tools, weapons, jewelry, ceramic utensils. Archaeological culture refers to the community of archaeological sites and objects dating back to the same time, concentrated in a certain area. In determining the archaeological culture, the arrangement of burial structures, the burial rite, tools, ceramics and jewelry are important.
Archaeological cultures have conditional names, in most cases given to them by the names of the places of the first finds or the most significant monuments, for example, Andronovo is named after the place where the first monument was found near the village of Andronovo, near the city of Achinsk in the Russia.
On the territory of the city of Rudny there is the Alekseevsky cultural complex, consisting of a settlement, a burial ground and a sacrificial hill belonging to people who lived in the III millennium BC. The Alekseevsky burial ground was discovered in 1921 by a geology student B.V. Sokolov. He discovered two destroyed burials with fragments of pottery, bronze tools and ornaments.
In the 30s, excavations of the burial ground were carried out by the Moscow archaeologist O. A. Krivtsova-Grakova, the State Historical Museum and the Kostanay Museum of Local Lore. In the same years, a parking lot and a hill of sacrifices were opened.
The Alekseevsky burial ground is located on the left bank of the Tobol, it arose in the immediate vicinity of the settlement of the same culture, the remains of which were found downstream the course of the river. At the eastern end of the burial ground there is a kind of cult monument, apparently, a sacrificial place, as evidenced by the numerous remains of sacrifices.
There are currently no external signs of the burial ground: there are neither mounds nor stone rings characteristic of the Andronovo type burial grounds. Almost the entire area of the ancient burial ground is occupied by the Kazakh cemetery.
21 (twenty-one) Andronovo burials were opened for study. All the graves had oval outlines, the walls - an uneven surface, the bottom - a bowl-shaped depression. The graves were not lined with stone slabs, there were no traces of wooden log cabins, in some graves the decay of a felt felt was traced, in which the deceased was probably wrapped.
At the burial, the custom was observed; the head of the deceased was oriented towards the settlement. All surviving skeletons lay in a crouched position, mostly on the left side, with strongly bent arms and legs. Probably, there was a custom to bind the whole body, or hands and feet.
The relatively good preservation of the bones of one of the burials made it possible to restore the muscular and skin cover and give an idea of the Caucasoid type of face. Items that accompanied the dead were found in almost all the graves, as well as two (sometimes three) pots, in which food was probably placed.
In addition to ceramics, the graves contained decorations, mostly bronze. Decorations distributed unevenly, by their number one can judge the position of women in the ancient settlement. The sacrificial place is a small hill on which sacrifices were made and occupies a central place in the entire complex of the monument.
On the western side, the burial ground closely adjoins it, merging with it. The main rite of sacrifice, apparently, consisted of burying pots of food in the sandy soil of the hill. As a result of work on the hill, 59 such pots were found.
Many pots bore traces of soot on their surface, which indicate their presence on the hearth. The type of food sacrificed is not known; it was either dairy or vegetable, since there are no bones in the pots. Two pits testify to the fact that another rite was used when sacrificing - burning.
One is on the top of the hill, the other is on its western slope. Both pits contained the remains of the burning of domestic animals. On the top of the hill, in an area of 7 x 8 square meters, no traces of sacrifices were found. Perhaps there was some kind of ground structure - a sanctuary or an altar, which left no traces.
In the material obtained on the sacrificial hill, there are no data that allow us to judge the order of the sacrifices. The settlement is located on the high bank of the old Tobol riverbed. For several years of excavations in the settlement, an area of ​​2566 square meters was unearthed and five dwellings were excavated in full.
They were rectangular dugouts with rounded corners. The smallest dugout was 15 meters long and 9 meters wide. The largest is 19 meters long, with a width of 16 meters. Hearths of different sizes were found in all dugouts. The main material from which the hearths were formed was flagstone, its outcrops are located above the settlement along the Tobol.
All hearth stones bear traces of calcination, many of them cracked and crumbled. The material used for hearths of another type was clay. Such hearths have come down to us in the form of shapeless clay heaps. In all dwellings, ceramic pots, their fragments, bones of domestic animals and various items associated with various industries were found.
The bone material from the excavations gives an idea of the composition of Andronov's domestic animals. These are sheep, cows, horses, camels. Bones of a dog, as well as wild animals (tur, deer, hare, fox) and birds were found.
The Andronovites had hoe farming, this can be judged by the found stone hoes and the remains of burnt wheat in the pits of the sacrificial hill. Fragments of grain graters were also found. A variety of bronze tools and weapons found on the area of the settlement, as well as a significant amount of metal jewelry, indicate that the Alekseevsky settlement dates back to the time when the manufacture of bronze objects reached a high development.
The entire process of metal processing, its smelting from ore and casting of bronze tools was carried out within the settlement. Items made by forging were also found on the area of the settlement. Bronze decorations from burials were mostly forged or embossed.
But also chased and cast bracelets, convex and concave with ends bent into a spiral, were also found. In the Alekseevsky settlement, many stone objects were found, especially tools. These include pestles, grain grinders, hammers and hoes, mortars, scrapers, and stone arrowheads used throughout the Bronze Age.
Stone tools widely used in Bronze Age cultures include burnishers for polishing the surface of vessels. These tools are completely unworked stones, most often river pebbles, ranging in size from 1.2 cm to 4 cm. The bulk of the finds of the settlement, the sacrificial hill and the burial ground of the Alekseevsky cultural complex are pottery, both in general and in the form of fragments.
All ceramic vessels - pots - can be divided into two main types. One of them is a jar pot with almost straight or slightly convex walls. The other one has a straight or slightly drawn neck, in the upper part of the pot, the edge of which is rounded or flattened.
A similar type of ware can be called a pot with a stepped shoulder. Pots with a stepped shoulder have an exceptional regularity and completeness of forms and a well-finished surface, for which polishing was used.
Their ornament is always carefully made and applied with a finely serrated stamp. These are hatched triangles and rhombuses, less often zigzags arranged in two or three rows, on the sides, below the ribs and less often, at the bottom. Jar pots and those close to them in shape are made less carefully.
Their surface is dominated by simple smoothing and shading of the surface. Most often, these pots are decorated with a simple ornament in the form of rows of horizontal zigzags or a Christmas tree pattern. When ornamenting these dishes, the correct division of the pattern into zones is often violated.
The excavations of the Alekseevsky ancient settlement yielded huge ceramic material in the form of shards (fragments) of dishes. Some of them are so large that they give an excellent idea not only of the ornament, but also of the shape of the vessels.
Some could be sorted and glued, resulting in a significant number of whole or almost whole vessels. Ceramic pots have different sizes, depending on their purpose. Pots of medium size bear traces of burnt food and soot, they belong to hearth dishes.
Others, large ones, were apparently intended for storing food supplies and various items. For the manufacture of dishes, local potters apparently brought clay from places located fifty kilometers from the parking lot, since there are no outcrops of clay suitable for pottery in the vicinity of the settlement.
The study of ceramics of the Bronze Age showed that the mass prepared for molding dishes was poorly mixed. Most of the vessels are made of clay, which is not a homogeneous mass. They usually flake and crumble. For the preparation of plastic mass, various impurities were widely used: talc, sand, mica, fireclay, crushed river shells.
When sculpting dishes, mainly the tape technique was used, when the entire vessel was formed from separate clay belts, glued one to the other. Fabric prints are visible on the inner surface of some pots. This fabric, a kind of coarse rep, was woven from woolen threads.
Probably, during the molding of the pot, clay was placed on a hard blank, covered with fabric and shaped like a jar vessel. With such modeling, clay was applied in separate horizontal stripes-ribbons. And then it was freely removed, together with the fabric, from the blank.
After separating the vessel from the blank, its inner surface was subjected to further processing. Fabric prints were removed by smoothing the surface with a notched punch. This is evidenced by light shading, a trace of a stamp, which covers the inner surface of the vessel.
The ornament was applied with a serrated and non-serrated stamp and rifling. Complex patterns on polished pots were applied with a finely serrated stamp. For the manufacture of stamps, bone was probably used, which can be easily finely processed.
All the dishes of the Alekseevsky settlement and the burial ground, apparently, were burned on open fires. Evenly and well-fired ceramics are rare. The color of the bulk of the dishes is dark gray and blackish, and the surface to a certain depth has yellowish and reddish colors.
This is due to insufficient hardening of the walls of the vessel, resulting from uneven and weak firing. Items found on the territory of the Alekseevskaya site, similar to those previously studied by archaeologists, are being transferred to the Rudny Museum at the present time.
These are stone tools - a knife, a chisel, pestles, scrapers, burnishers, arrowheads, pots of different sizes with different ornamentation, many fragments of pots. During the construction of the church in 1997, in addition to pots and their fragments, bronze ornaments were found: convex-concave open bracelets, bracelets with spirally bent ends, pendants and clips for hair, beads, round plaques that adorned clothes. All these finds are exhibited, telling about the distant past of the people who inhabited the territory of our town.
Geographical coordinates of Alekseevsky archaeological complex: N52°57'25.12" E63°09'34.15"

Authority and photos:
Compilers, leading researchers: Khomyakova V.I., Chirkina L.N., Bogdan V.A. Chief curator: Bogdan V.A.
https://rudny.ucoz.kz/index/0-5