Faunal remains from the Karakabak settlement site of the 1st-6th AD (Mangyshlak Peninsula, Republic of Kazakhstan)

The article describes to the first results of the study of faunal remains recovered from the urban settlement of Karakabak on the Mangyshlak Peninsula. This large port and trade and craft center existed on the Caspian-Pontic section of the Great Silk Road in the 1st-6th centuries AD. At present, more than 16.2 thousand identifiable bone remains have been analyzed. They belong to 6 species of domestic and 12 species of wild mammals, and also include bone remains of humans, fish, birds, and the Central Asian turtle. The osteological material is quite fragmented and represents kitchen waste. Only about 31 % of the bone remains could be identified to a species or class (fish, birds). The remains of domestic animals predominate, accounting for 88.5 % of the total number of bone remains and 70.9 % of the minimum number of individuals. Among them, up to 80 % are sheep and goat bones, 9 % of the remains belong to horses and cows, and less than 1 % belong to a camel. Among the hunting and commercial species, more than 2/3 of the bone remains belong to the Caspian seal; kulan, saiga, gazelle and mountain sheep were hunted in much smaller quantities. Fox, corsak, and wolf were also hunted for fur. Single bones of a tiger, a wild boar, a Bukhara deer and a dune cat were found. Occurrences of tiger, wild boar, and red deer bones are undoubtedly due to the existence of extensive floodplain thickets (tugai) along the banks of rivers and lakes in relative accessibility from the settlement. For the first time, the article introduces into scientific circulation metric data on a large sample of bones of the Caspian seal, as well as morphometric data on the bones of the skeleton of the gazelle and saiga. The results of the first studies offaunal remains make it possible to determine the basics of life support of the urban settlement of Karakabak and the basics ofthe paleodiet, and to present a picture of the climatic and environmental conditions (landscape, types of vegetation) in the 1st-6th centuries, radically different from the modern state ofthe north-eastern coast ofthe Caspian Sea.