Productive Work of Yu.A. Zadneprovsky and E.V. Druzhinina
The city of Osh is undoubtedly the oldest in Kyrgyzstan and one of the ancient urban centers of Central Asia. Its written history spans over a millennium, while archaeological finds date back to three millennia ago. However, the question of the time of the city's founding remains open in scientific literature. There have been no specific excavations of the ancient substratum of modern Osh (including its former old town part) before, although episodic yet fruitful work has been conducted here by Yu.A. Zadneprovsky and E.V. Druzhinina.
There are currently no publications summarizing archaeological and numismatic finds, various historical and cultural monuments in Osh and its surroundings. Preparation for compiling a catalog of monuments in the republic began in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Attempts to date the time of the city's emergence by comparing the terms "Osh" and "Usun" (the name of the ancient tribes that once inhabited this area) or through previously widespread Muslim traditions are still debatable. It is only reliably known that in ancient times, long before Osh functioned as a city, this land was one of the centers of human settlement during the Stone Age.
Following local historians and archaeologists, it can be asserted that the territory of the modern city and its surroundings have been inhabited for at least since the Neolithic era. This is supported not only by various archaeological evidence but also by drawings of cave and rock paintings found directly in Osh — in the "Eagles' Overhang" cave on Suleiman Mountain, at Surret-Tash, as well as in the vicinity of the city. The beginning of relatively long-term habitation and economic development of the current urban territory is associated with the emergence of the first sedentary settlements in the Fergana Valley, where ancient agricultural traditions date back to the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. The bearers of these traditions were representatives of the so-called Chust archaeological culture, named after the initially studied archaeological site near the city of Chuy in the Uzbek SSR. This served as a benchmark in the study of other agricultural settlements—oases of the 13th to 8th centuries BC in Fergana.
The inhabitants of the Chust and neighboring Dalverzin settlements of the Bronze Age, like the settlers of Osh, cultivated grains — wheat, barley, and millet, and raised livestock. They lived in earthen, primitive adobe houses and those made of raw brick. In the Osh settlement, the main type of housing was semi-subterranean dwellings located on the terraces of the southern slope of Suleiman Mountain. Such dwellings were still quite common among the Kyrgyz and other peoples of Central Asia and Kazakhstan in the recent pre-revolutionary past. It can be assumed that "the roots of this tradition of housing construction, therefore, date back to the Bronze Age."
The history of the discovery and initial study of the aforementioned Osh settlement and the evidence of life of Bronze Age people in the southern regions of modern Kyrgyzstan is also quite interesting.
The raised ceramics discovered by E.V. Druzhinina (an employee of the Osh Regional Museum) on the southern slope of Suleiman Mountain (1967) and on the territory of the Osh Pedagogical Institute (1974) included painted pottery and stone artifacts characteristic of the sedentary farmers of the Chust culture, allowing for the assumption of the existence of a terraced settlement on "Osh Mountain" in the distant past.
The remains of this settlement were indicated by the exposure of the cultural layer with characteristic ceramics, recorded in the spring of 1976 by E.V. Druzhinina during the construction of a road to one of the buildings created in the mountain for the museum. The work of the Fergana archaeological expedition (Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of the USSR) under the leadership of Yu.A. Zadneprovsky confirmed the correctness of the mentioned hypothesis. The joint excavations of expedition participants and employees of the Osh Museum on the slope of Suleiman Mountain—at the site of a stationary settlement of the Chust period in Osh—were highly productive.
Osh, Originating in the Late Bronze Age
To date, three Bronze Age settlements have been identified on the territory of modern Osh. One is on the left bank of the Ak-Bura River, on the eastern side at the foot of Suleiman Mountain. Another is at Chayan-tepe, in the western part of the city. And finally, the oldest one is directly on Suleiman Mountain.
Thanks to many years of excavations (which are still ongoing by E.V. Druzhinina and Yu.A. Zadneprovsky), we can have a fuller picture of this ancient center of life in the territory of the city.
The last of the three mentioned settlements was located on terraces along the steep southern slope of the mountain. Ten earth shelters were excavated on three terraces, but there were certainly more previously, as 15 residential terraces were identified. Research showed that the inhabitants were skilled builders. Using primitive tools made of wood and stone (and possibly bronze), they patiently carved their dwellings into the steep slope of the mountain. The earth shelters were narrow rectangular dwellings 3.5–5 m wide, with the length of the preserved part ranging from 11 to 15 m. In one of them, eight storage pits were found, which practically occupied the entire floor area. Apparently, a filled pit was covered with debris and then plastered over, while a new one was arranged nearby. One of the earth shelters was notably larger—11 m x 5 m.
The area of the largest earth shelter exceeded 100 sq. m — it was presumably a community house for gatherings. Inside the earth shelter, depressions for support posts, which held the roof, were discovered. According to Yu.A. Zadneprovsky, these were grounded dwellings with light and smoke openings in the roof and support posts in the center.
Numerous storage pits (about 150 have been discovered) indicate the long-term sedentism of the population and their engagement in agriculture. Around 16,000 fragments of pottery have been found here, including about a thousand with painting (red-coated hemispherical bowls, conical pots, jugs with spherical bodies, characteristic spouts and handles, painted pottery with geometric and zoomorphic patterns, and the only known depiction of a goat), as well as over a dozen preserved richly ornamented vessels.
Imported black-gray polished pottery was also found. A collection of 400 stone tools was gathered: two sickles, mortars and pestles, pounders, grain grinders, and chisels. Pieces of slag, bronze awls, as well as a carnelian bead and pendants with drilled holes were also identified. Notably, a stone head of a mace—a symbol of the authority of the ancient leader—was previously known from settlements in Dalverzin, Chuy, and the Uzgen region.
As a result of the initial excavation work, valuable information has already been obtained about housing, the development of pottery craftsmanship and metallurgy, stone, bone, and metal processing, the culture and economy of the farmers of the Osh settlement, their trade relations, and connections with the surrounding nomadic and sedentary populations of ancient Fergana.
Thus, the first known sedentary agricultural settlement on the territory of Osh, which emerged in the late Bronze Age, can be metaphorically described as the "progenitor" of the modern city. The latest archaeological work conducted by Yu.A. Zadneprovsky confirmed his earlier viewpoint about the antiquity of the Osh settlement, which grew on the territory of the modern city three thousand years ago. This date is also supported by radiocarbon dating of the settlement's age. The Osh settlement with a terraced layout represents a previously unknown new type of Chust settlements. The extraordinary layout and abundance of painted pottery allowed archaeologists to conclude about the unique cultural and ideological significance of the Osh settlement. All of the above indicates the important significance of the excavated Bronze Age settlement on Suleiman Mountain for both the history of the city of Osh and the history of Kyrgyzstan as a whole. Therefore, we have elaborated on it in such detail.
The development of the Osh oasis by the ancient inhabitants of the region, sedentary farmers, and nomadic herders continued in subsequent times. This is confirmed by many historical and cultural monuments from later periods identified in Osh and its surroundings, particularly at the burial site of Ozgor (in the area of the modern village of the same name in the upper reaches of the Ak-Bura River), dated to the early Iron Age (6th to 4th centuries BC). Excavated here in 1979 were catacomb burials that yielded various household items and ornaments of nomads — bronze buckles, bracelets, rings, carnelian beads, a large number of ceramic vessel fragments, and iron tips. And on the eastern outskirts of Osh — at Mirzalym-tepe — a house-farm of a peasant from the so-called Shurabashat archaeological culture (3rd to 1st centuries BC) was excavated at the same time. Over two years, this monument was fully excavated, allowing for a detailed representation of its layout and reconstruction. According to Yu.A. Zadneprovsky, the main mass of the agricultural population of ancient Fergana lived in such fortified house-farms.