On the issue of preservation of Stone Age monuments in the foothill areas of the Almaty region

Abstract

The article focuses on the issues of research and preservation of Stone Age monuments in the foothill areas of the Almaty region. Over the past few years, more than 10 promising Paleolithic sites with a preserved cultural layer have been discovered in the region, which allowed to uncover some problems of settlement of the region in antiquity and outlined a new range of questions about the origins and connections of Upper Paleolithic cultures. Almaty and the adjacent areas belong to dynamically developing agglomerations, which imposes an imprint on the issues of preservation of historical and cultural heritage objects: sites, settlements, complexes with petroglyphs, etc. Periodically, evidence of the destruction of archaeological monuments in the vicinity and the city of Almaty itself appears in the media. The preservation of Stone Age monuments in the region is becoming particularly relevant. Since the nature of their location has its own peculiarities in loess deposits, almost all of them belong to the category of emergency and were discovered in the course of destruction by anthropogenic activity. Due to the fact that the archaeological material is mainly represented by stone inventory, they are the most vulnerable as a result of economic activity, unlike other chronological periods, due to the weak ability to distinguish archaeological finds in stone raw materials. A thorough search and identification of Stone Age monuments will allow us to study this period in the region and create an opportunity for their preservation.