Akhangaran group of the National Center of Archeology of the UzAS led by Candidate of Sciences in History S.R. Ilyasova, financed by the Tashkent Department of the International Charitable Foundation «Oltin Meros», in the autumn of 2020, continued the archaeological study of the settlement located next to the Shoabdumalik-ota (Shodmalik-ota) mazar.
Excavation site P-6 with measurement 7 × 5 m was laid in an elevated area southeast of the mazar, which gave interesting results. Here, a small part of a large residential building, built of pakhsa and raw bricks, was uncovered, with rooms that were, apparently, the remains of a home bath. This is evidenced by the presence in one of the rooms (room 1) of floors paved with burnt bricks and a bench deepened into a niche, covered with a layer of ganch plaster. Excavations have shown that to the northwest of the room 1 there were several more rooms (rooms 2 and 3), the purpose of which still needs be clarified.
So, room 3, possibly, consisted of two parts and, judging by the interior, could serve as a room for resting after bathing - a sufa was arranged near one of the walls, laid on top with burnt bricks, and opposite it a kind of podium decorated with corrugations was built of raw brick. The floors here are paved with large burnt slabs, and in the northeastern part which may have been separated by a wooden door, with small burnt bricks. This room burned intensely, and after the fire it was filled up. The found fragments of ceramics allow us to pre-date the building on P-6 to the 11 century.
According to the significant territorial distribution of cultural layers and the nature of the architectural and archaeological material obtained during excavations, one of the towns of Ilaka mentioned in written sources could have been located here.
