Periods of Habitation of the Sarabulun Settlement

When was life flourishing?

Even a brief overview of the material culture with a short excursion into its chronology indicates a long life of the underwater settlement of Sarabulun. Determining the time of its origin, flourishing, and demise is associated with significant difficulties that traditional archaeology does not encounter. Moreover, the study of underwater monuments is immeasurably more complex, as it is impossible to trace the spatial arrangement of cultural layers and the dating items of material culture within them. The researcher is left with the only method of determining the lifespan of the settlement — comparing finds with well-dated items obtained from excavations of other archaeological sites on land (the analogy method).

Currently, based on a number of bright and characteristic materials unique to one clearly defined chronological period, the following periods of habitation of the Sarabulun settlement can be distinguished: early Saka (8th-6th centuries BC); Saka-Usun (5th century BC - turn of the era); late medieval (14th-15th centuries).

The oldest finds at the settlement are stone sickle-shaped knives, which serve as a reliable indicator of ancient agricultural cultures of the late Bronze Age (12th-7th centuries BC). Such knives are well-known from excavations at settlements in Eastern Turkestan, Fergana, and southern Central Asia. The closest to the Issyk-Kul region are the settlements of the Chust culture in Fergana. When comparing the materials of Sarabulun and Fergana, it becomes clear that alongside stone sickle-shaped knives, the population of the Issyk-Kul and Fergana settlements used other similar tools: grain grinders, hammers, pestles, bronze sickle-shaped knives, as well as partially similar ceramics, especially vessels with spout-nozzles. The listed items of material culture are neutral regarding the determination of chronology, meaning they could belong to the same period as the stone sickle-shaped knives or to a later period.

Finds of stone sickle-shaped knives on the northern shore of the lake in the area of Ananyevo — Kamensky and Toru-Aigyr indicate that settlements of the late Bronze Age could also have existed on the northern shore of Issyk-Kul.

It would be tempting to suggest that in Northern Kyrgyzstan, in the fertile Pre-Issyk-Kul region, during the late Bronze Age, there existed a highly developed ancient agricultural civilization, which, like the Fergana or Bactrian ones, had its "capital" center with powerful fortress walls, a ruler's citadel, temples, and citizens' houses. Around the "capital," along the rivers and streams flowing into the lake, there were smaller settlements with cultivated fields, gardens, vineyards, and vegetable gardens...

This assumption is enticing, but at the current level of archaeological knowledge of the Pre-Issyk-Kul region, it is premature. We are not yet aware of finds of the second (after the stone sickle-shaped knife) indicator of the ancient agricultural culture of Fergana — ceremonial pottery, painted with black paint on a red background.

Moreover, the chances of finding such pottery are minimal, as there is not much of it even in Fergana. Even in the "capital" center of Fergana — at the Dalverzin settlement — out of nearly 70,000 fragments of vessels, there were only slightly more than 800 (or just 1.2 percent) that were painted.

It should also be noted that in the Pre-Issyk-Kul region, alongside the ancient agricultural Chust culture in Fergana, there existed another late Bronze Age culture associated with pastoral tribes from Kazakhstan and Southern Siberia, which, it is possible, began to engage in nomadic animal husbandry as early as the 9th century, mastered local copper ore resources, and created a special production center within the Semirechye metalworking hub.

It is most likely that stone sickle-shaped knives of the Chust type penetrated into the Pre-Issyk-Kul settlements during the very last period of the existence of the Chust culture — in the 8th-7th centuries BC. This time is referred to as the early Saka period in the chronology of the steppes.

Secrets of Issyk-Kul Lake