Creation of a Museum-Reserve on the Buran
Southwest ceremonial complex of Burana buildings
In 1972 and 1974, protective work was conducted at the Burana settlement by the Institute of History of the Kyrgyz SSR. The construction zone for the irrigation network and the development of new land for the "Alchal" collective farm included part of the hills, including the remnants of a medieval estate in the southeastern sector of the settlement. A specially formed group from the Burana detachment of the Kyrgyz archaeological expedition conducted excavations on a hill measuring 70X80 m. The ruins are located 2.8 km from the central quadrangle, near the first ring of the long rampart and parallel to it.
By the time of the excavations, most of the estate's buildings had been damaged, but traces of a house were clearly visible in the southern corner of the courtyard, along with an entrance from the southeast. The highest part was the northwest residential section of the estate, where twenty rooms of various purposes and an inner courtyard were uncovered, dividing the layout of the rooms into two halves — ceremonial and utility. Two periods of habitation of the house were identified, with reconstructions and repairs of the building occurring during the 11th-12th centuries. Judging by the nature of the construction debris, the building was single-story.
The southwest ceremonial complex included ten rooms located on both sides of a wide corridor measuring 28 m in length and 4 m in width. One end of the corridor led to a courtyard with stone-paved paths. The thick walls (1.6—2.3 m wide and up to 4 m high) and narrow long rooms suggest vaulted ceilings. The corner openings in the rooms were adorned with pointed arches. The floors of some of the rooms were laid with burnt format bricks measuring 25 cm on each side and 4.5 cm thick; the walls were plastered and whitewashed with alabaster.
The northeastern utility section of the estate included 11 small rooms and storerooms. Here, they were arranged around an iwan hall that opened into an inner courtyard. The inner surfaces of the walls were decorated with carved ganch plaster, patterned panel masonry, and the floor was laid with burnt bricks. A large accumulation of wood, patches of reed decay, and thin walls (sometimes less than a meter) indicate a flat wooden-frame ceiling in this part of the building.
The outer walls have a combined masonry of beaten clay and raw brick, characteristic of architecture in Central Asia since ancient times. The buildings did not have a foundation. The estate's fence was made of beaten clay with a large admixture of gravel — a characteristic soil of the settlement's mainland; the wall width in the masonry is 1.2 m. Overall, the residential part of the estate covered 1550 sq. m and belonged to a large feudal lord.
The first period of habitation of the house is associated with the installation of smoke heating through kanas — channels running along the walls in the form of hollow sufs. Such a heating system was recorded by A. N. Bernshtein in the residential part of the Buddhist monastery of the 9th-10th centuries at the Ak-Beshim settlement, where narrow channels were laid in the central wide wall and under the floor. The presence of similar heating systems is known for medieval residential architecture in Semirechye, Khorezm, and Kazakhstan. Kanes were also widely used in ancient Mongolian cities in the 12th century.
The main part of the finds in all the rooms consists of clay dishes characteristic of the 11th-12th centuries. The beginning of the 11th century dates the estate and a silver dirham of the Bukhara mint found on the floor of one of the rooms from the year 413 AH (1022-23), minted during the reign of Abu Mansur Muhammad Arslan-khan (ibn Ali).
The excavated house in the estate is among the monuments of medieval monumental residential architecture in Central Asia. It resembles a castle of the agricultural aristocracy of the early medieval period. It is still surrounded by adobe walls and various utility buildings, but elements of the castle such as the stylobate, loophole, and multi-story structure have already been lost. Among all the estates excavated to date at the settlements of Kyrgyzstan, the Burana building is the most monumental. It undoubtedly belonged to a large feudal landowner, who apparently had privately owned cultivated lands within the city walls. This peculiarity of the Chuy settlements allowed researchers to consider them "agrarianized." Extensive areas of the city, spanning several dozen square kilometers, were occupied by estate buildings and cultivated land and were enclosed by a long rampart.
