3600-year-old bronze age city ‘Semiyarka’ discovered in Kazakhstan

ASTANA: Archaeologists have uncovered a long-lost Bronze Age city in northeastern Kazakhstan.

The settlement, known as Semiyarka, dates to around 1600 BC and once housed an estimated 300 to 1,000 people, according to a new study published in Antiquity. The 346-acre site sits along the Irtysh River, which flows from China’s Altai Mountains into Siberia.

Residents lived in rows of mud-brick homes and appear to have relied heavily on livestock, eating horse meat and drinking horse milk.

Dan Lawrence, a landscape archaeologist at Durham University, is the co-author of a study published today in the journal Antiquity that says researchers have unearthed the ‘City of Seven Ravines’.

“The settlements we do have tend to be tiny, with just a handful of houses, while Semiyarka is massive,” Lawrence said.

Although first identified in the early 2000s, the site has now been mapped in far greater detail through drone surveys and new excavations.

Archaeologists uncovered around 20 mud-brick houses arranged inside large earthen banks—possibly defensive structures. To the southeast, they discovered clear traces of extensive metalworking, including metal artefacts, ore, slag, and crucibles used for smelting.

“Semiyarka is the only site in the lowland steppe zone where we have evidence for advanced metallurgy on such a large scale,” Lawrence noted. “Its existence changes our interpretation of the region, showing strong connections between the uplands and lowlands and large-scale networks of movement and trade.”

Life at Semiyarka was likely difficult. Winters were extremely cold and blanketed in deep snow. Permanent residents relied on sturdy mud-brick homes shielded by earthen banks to withstand the harsh climate.

Lawrence suggests many inhabitants may have worked in metal production—smelting copper and tin to make bronze—or even panning for tin in the nearby river.

Fragments of pottery found at the site link the settlement to Late Bronze Age cultures, including the barley-growing Cherkaskul and the sheep-herding Alekseyevka-Sargary communities.