Multidisciplinary investigations of Konoplyanka settlement in the Southern Trans-Urals: preliminary results

Purpose: Over two score of Bronze Age settlements were mapped in the Southern Trans-Urals steppe. Their locations are basically known from aerial photos, just few are investigated by excavations. In this article a study of Konoplyanka enclosed settlement is presented as staging areas for analyzing archaeological imaging and uncovering unique data that is unobtainable using traditional archaeological excavation techniques. This site as well as two others are in a scope of Russian-German collaborative research project in the valley of the Karagajly-Ayat river. Due to fact that analytical stage of the research is in a progress authors presents preliminary results of the study. Results: Unfortunately, the site was systematically ploughed during the last 50 years. Therefore, its relief is completely levelled. This fact dictated the necessity of detailed geophysical survey. The obtained geophysical map provides a general layout of the settlement, position and size of houses, spaced wells. According to magnetogram this particular site is seemed to be a short-time inhabited (mono-component) settlement especially with regard to another nearest site. The enclosure of the Konoplyanka settlement is indicated by a strong positive anomaly (ditch?) with two breaks (entrances?). In the eastern parts the magnetic anomalies due to the enclosure are remarkable weaker, indicating partly destruction due to plowing or erosion. In the western half of the settlement, parallel to the long side, there are equally spaced (about 10 m) strong positive magnetic anomalies, representing former wells and/or hearths, furnaces. Other positive magnetic anomalies are indications for pits, garbage disposals, fire places, wells, hearths or similar structures. In the western half a row with ten individual houses exists, in the eastern half a row with eleven individual houses. A sequence of core drillings with a core borer was undertaken to investigate and determine the geomorphological conditions and soil structure as well as the sediments for archeobotanical study. The two different investigation methods brought the results that the old arm of the Karagajly-Ayat was no longer filled with water in the Iron Age. The situation in the Bronze Age, that is, at the time of the fortified settlement, is still unclear. Anyway, the aspect of a fortification based upon the topography must be underlined. Charcoals and some animal bones from excavated structures were sampled for radiocarbon dating. Its preliminary results provide date back to 1920-1745 cal. BC. Conclusion: Despite similarity of the studied sites the encloser of Konoplyanka shows its distinctiveness with regard to other studied in the valley sites, namely Kamenny Ambar (Olgino) and Zhurumbaj. The paper shows a correlation between data on remote sensing and archaeological excavation as well as archeobotanical and geomorphological prospections, and discusses some questions that appear to be interesting.