Underwater Treasures
At the ancient settlement of Sarybulun, a fairly solid collection of material culture items has been gathered over three new seasons, which in some way provide insight into the lives of its inhabitants, their occupations, and daily life. All items had been underwater for a long time and were covered with lime deposits. Sometimes these deposits form thick layers that obscure the very shape of the object. They are so firmly "cemented" to the ancient artifacts that mechanical cleaning, especially of large ceramics, is practically impossible. Ceramic and stone items can only be freed from lime deposits using a 50% solution of hydrochloric acid.
All findings in the Sarybulun area can be divided into four groups: ceramics, stone artifacts, metal items, and horn crafts.
Ceramics. As in the overwhelming majority of archaeological sites, the ceramics of Sarybulun are the most abundant material. Fragments of various sizes and colors are scattered over a large area of the bay's bottom and along the coastline, which until recently was also the lake's bottom. Here, in a very short time, one can compile an impressive collection of ancient ceramics.
The abundance of material allows for greater selectivity. We examine everything but take and store only those shards of ancient vessels that can provide maximum information. The most interesting fragments are those with parts of the rim or base. Specialists determine the shape of the upper and lower parts of the vessels from them.
A great find is considered to be a shard that has preserved at least a small portion of the base and rim. Such a vessel is deemed "archaeologically whole" as its dimensions and shape can be restored without much effort. All shards showing traces of ornamentation or characteristic net patterns (imprints of ancient fabrics), usually located on the inner side of the dishes, are also not overlooked. They carry information about the aesthetic tastes and craft technology of the ancient herders. And a true celebration for an archaeologist is the discovery of whole vessels. About a dozen have been found at Sarybulun.
The diversity of shapes and sizes of the dishes of the ancient herders of the Prissykul region is striking. The assortment at the settlement is much richer than that found in the burial mounds! While in the burial mounds of the 1st millennium BC, excavated by archaeologists, the overwhelming majority of finds are individual-use vessels, i.e., tableware from which a person ate and drank, at the settlement, in addition to this, there is also kitchenware (for cooking) and storage vessels (for storing food). A painted vessel (albeit only one so far) has also been found at the Sarybulun settlement, which can be classified as ceremonial ware. Kitchenware consists of cauldrons. In addition to numerous fragments, a fortunate chance led to the discovery of a magnificent whole specimen of a spherical clay cauldron with four horizontally positioned loop handles. The bottom of the cauldron bears imprints of fabric. The walls are thick, made from fireproof clay. The capacity of the cauldron is about 7 liters, which can provide a single meal for a family of 7-10 people.
Tableware is much richer than kitchenware. Here, pitchers with wide necks, mugs with vertically positioned loop handles, bowls of various sizes, wide open dishes, vessels of jar shape with vertical walls, and cups have been found. Such vessels have long been known to archaeologists, as they are the most frequently encountered in the burials of the Saka-Usun period.
Particular attention is drawn to a small pitcher painted with a stable red paint. The entire vessel was covered with a dense layer of lime, and only on one side were traces of red paint barely visible. We hesitated for a long time before treating the vessel with hydrochloric acid. What if the painting disappears along with the bottom deposits? It did not disappear; instead, it shone with red dots and commas on the light yellow surface of the pitcher.
While the tableware of the ancient herders was well known from finds in burials, and kitchenware from metal samples from random finds, storage ceramics (intended for storing products such as grains, flour, wine, oil, etc.) were completely unknown to science from either Prissykul or other northern regions of Kyrgyzstan. The storage vessels we discovered are thick-walled (up to 2 cm) barrel-shaped jugs with slightly flared or cylindrical bodies. All of them have wide openings (from 25 to 61 cm). Many jugs have loop handles at the upper part of the body, while others have handles shaped as massive protrusions of round or oval cross-section. Apparently, the storage vessels had a rounded bottom, as our collections contain a large number of spherical thick-walled bottoms, made from a clay mixture with a high content of coarse-grained sand, identical to the fragments of the upper part of the jugs.
At the Sarybulun settlement, rare forms of ceramics are also known: a lid for a vessel, which is a thick round disk with a loop handle, a fragment of a shallow vessel of square shape, a cylindrical solid stand from a vase or cup type vessel, and two fragments of a brazier made from loose clay mass.
On many fragments and on whole specimens (cauldron, painted pitcher), at the base and on the lower part of the walls, traces of a relief dense net pattern are visible — imprints of fabrics used to shape the spherical lower parts of the vessels.
All ceramic ware from Sarybulun craftsmen (with very few exceptions) was hand-shaped, without the use of a potter's wheel. It could be expected that the ancient herders, who were able to create artistic masterpieces from materials far less malleable than clay (from metal, wood, bone), would have decorated their vessels in such a way that any of them, like Greek painted pottery, would take its honorable place in the history of ancient art, revealing to future generations the most unexpected aspects of the lives, daily life, and ideology of their creators. Unfortunately, this did not happen. The same Sarybulun craftsmen, who skillfully used the spherical surface to depict a coiled fierce predator with bared fangs and managed to reproduce the image in bronze, were helpless when it came to decorating the most mass-produced items of their craft — ceramics.
We know of two technical methods of ornamentation at the Sarybulun settlement: painting (as mentioned above) and scratching decorations into raw clay before firing. The motifs of the ornamentation are as primitive as their execution. Usually, these are wavy or zigzag horizontal lines applied to the shoulders of the vessel. In one case, the wavy lines were scratched vertically — from the rim to the base.
Nowadays, science reveals truly fantastic, informative possibilities of ceramic vessels.
Professor of paleontology and archaeology from Toronto, Canada, Peter Levin considers the pottery of the ancients as a gramophone record, on which fragments of conversations of the ceramic masters are recorded. When the pot spins on the potter's wheel, sound vibrations from human speech or music cause barely perceptible vibrations in the pot. This leaves a corresponding imprint — a natural recording. It can be reproduced using modern technology similar to that used in compact discs. Currently, Peter Levin is developing a "playback device" for reproducing ancient recordings. The information captured on the pottery will be read by a laser beam. Any irregularities in the beam reflected onto a photodetector will then be translated back into sounds using a computer that filters out background noise. Is this possible? The future will tell.
Discovery in the waters of the Tyup Bay