Archaeological inventory from the settlements of the Tatars in the Middle Irtysh region of the early modern and modern periods based on field research

This article describes the finds obtained from surface collection and test drilling of cultural layers in six settlements of Western Siberian Tatars, located in Bolsherechie, Tara, and Tevriz Districts of Omsk Region, in 2019-2022. This inventory included pottery and objects of clay, bone, and metal. Faience fragments dominated in the collections compared to fragments of pottery made by hand and on potter ’s wheel. There were half as many decorated specimens with the prevailing painting by hand in this pottery. Floral ornamentation was dominant; the simplest patterns consisted of edge band. According to dating signs, faience samples belong to the 19th and second half of the 20th centuries. Large number of fragments of such vessels can be explained by fragility of faience as opposed to metal objects which serve for a long time. In the second half of the 20th century, with improvement of life, more expensive faience came into use more and more often. Interesting, although not unique, finds include a fish fork, spoon made of horn, birch bark back parts of footwear, and a bead made of opaque glass. They have broad cultural and chronological parallels. In our case, the closest parallels appear at the sites of the Late Middle Ages in the Middle Irtysh region and Baraba forest-steppe. Presence of inventory of a relatively late origin (faience with stamps of the 19th century) and objects in some cultural layers (spoon made of horn, piercing tools made of horse splints, undecorated clay spindle whorl, blue glass bead, birch bark elements of footwear, etc.) which, as parallels show, were used from the Late Middle Ages to ethnographic modern times, indicates that these objects, which were archaic for the culture of the Tatars, manifest the continuity of their material culture.