The grandiose project of archaeological mapping of the 20th century: the virgin land expedition of K. Akishev in the Ishim river region

Abstract

In the middle of the 20th century, the archaeology of Kazakhstan implemented a grandiose project of mapping antiquities throughout the Republic. The project was caused by a large-scale national economic task of developing virgin and fallow lands in 1954‑1956. Ten archaeological expeditions were organized to the northern regions of Kazakhstan to identify and register ancient monuments, collect material for compiling an archaeological map. K.A. Akishev was appointed the head of the North Kazakhstan archaeological expedition. This was the first stage of the study and systematization of information on the archaeology of Northern Kazakhstan. The result of the three-year work of the virgin land expeditions was the publication of the first set of monuments in the practice of Soviet archaeology within the framework of the whole republic – the Archaeological Map of Kazakhstan published in 1960. The map register includes 5,000 monuments of archaeology, history and architecture. All archival information about the monuments and expeditions of the 18th–19th centuries was collected. The register is equipped with maps of search routes and the location of archaeological sites, indexes of geographical and bibliographic names. This edition remains a model and a reference book for specialists in the field of studying and preserving ancient monuments. The purpose of this article is to give a comparative analysis of the exploration work of the virgin land expedition of K.A. Akishev and the archaeological routes of subsequent years, carried out in order to monitor the preservation of monuments known from the Archaeological map of Kazakhstan and the fixation of new archaeological sites.