Experimental study of the historical and archaeological context of urban lifestyle in the modern urban development of Tomsk

In the conditions of active local development of the historical part of the Tomsk city, an important and perspective task is to create an archaeological database of information uncovered in the course of excavations at the land plots used for construction. The currency of such research lies in the possibility to follow the dynamics of development, infrastructure, various phenomena of the daily life of a city in the range of three centuries: 17 to 19. 2015 excavation sites in Zaozerye - a scantly known district from the river Tom' to the Voskresenskaya mountain - enriched the database with a collection of items and ruins of farmstead structures. The article presents experimental interpretation of archaeological materials combined with written archival and cartography data, enabling identification of certain lifestyle features of the Tomsk dwellers in the 17 - 19 centuries. There have been uncovered core construction elements, remains of timber flooring, timber wall siding of subsoil structures. They could belong to standalone structures, such as standalone cellars, or to internal parts of structures, such as underfloor spaces, underfloor cellars or deepened basement. The findings dated from the end of the 19 century to the beginning of the 20 century, correspond to the lifestyle of a bourgeois home, which existed in that location according to the archives. An interesting collection of glass items, such as fragments of vases, small liqueur glasses, pharmaceutical vials and flasks, fragments of common and shtof bottles. There was gathered a representative selection of bottoms and necks of wine bottles produced using the glass blowing technology. The ceramic part of the collection is represented by tableware fragments of various types and time periods: modern flower pots, ceramic kitchenware belonging to a number of lifestyle types, black and stained polished type characteristic for the period before 19 century. The local culture layer lens, which color and contents is characteristic of the Middle Ages - early Modern Age, as well as presence of ceramic items with black and stained polish evidence to the possibility that Zaozerye preserves an early cultural layer corresponding to the 17 - 18 century. Zaozerye, the northern underurbanized suburb of Tomsk, was a place where crafts were practiced, making use of its closeness to the river Tom. The land was cheap here, which served as incentive for the merchant and bourgeois to settle here. Written sources, mostly paperwork of the city self-government bodies, revealed the construction plan of the farmstead and the names of its owners. The sources discovered cast light on the lifestyle of the Tomsk bourgeois and update the knowledge about this social stratum of the Tomsk city, which has here to before been poorly described in scientific literature.

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