Fortress "Sve" on a top Turan mountain on the right bank of the Yenisei river

Purpose. We introduce data on a newly discovered fortress atop Mount Turan (Krasnoturansk region of Krasnoyarsk Krai) located on the right bank of the River Yenisei (at the present time - the east coast of the Krasnoyarsk Reservoir). Results. In the course of field research on the right bank of the Krasnoyarsk Reservoir in 2014, we inspected a stone fortress on a top mountain. With the mountain dominating the skyline, some stone walls of the fortress survived and were examined. In plan the fortress resembles an elongated rectangle with a sheer drop on the western side. The other three more gentle slopes were protected with stone walls. They were composed of fragments of Devonian sandstone slabs of different size fit together tightly without mortar. The walls were erected on the border between a somewhat flat top of the mountain and more steep slopes. The northern wall is almost straight and is the shortest one, measuring about 30 m. The eastern wall is the longest, measuring more than 580 m on the straight line but being longer in fact. The southern wall of the fortress is almost straight and much shorter in length, about 125 m. Here the mountain has a gentle slope, and there was found a gap in the wall remains. It might have been the entrance to the fortress with, presumably, wooden gates, which did not survive. No traces of making ditches or removing soil both inside and outside the fortress were discovered. The walls or the surface did not suffer modern damage as well. Conclusion. Preliminary dating and ethno-cultural identity of the monument do not seem to be obvious. However, the fortress has such features as location atop a steep mountain with a flat top, the construction of a stone-wall fortress made of Devonian sandstone slabs fit without mortar, a sheer drop used to replace a wall and mountain shoulders as part of fortification, as well as a gap in the wall, which allow to qualify this fortress as belonging to a group of mountain fortresses «sve» (in the Khakass language) discovered in the Minusinsk Hollow. From the site of the fortress, we could see a number of similar objects on the right and left banks of the Yenisei. All of them are likely to be elements of a single defense system with a medieval fortified area studied earlier in Oglahtah Massif, on the left bank of the Yenisei River, as the center. Thus, the fortress under consideration seems to be a valuable archaeological monument, a part of a scaled defense system covering both banks of the Yenisei and used in the Middle Ages and later. Our description is going to promote further studies of the object as well as its registration and protection.