Talgar Alluvial Fan Dataset
Claudia Chang and Perry A. Tourtellotte

Comparative
Archaeology Database
University of Pittsburgh
http://www.cadb.pitt.edu
Email: cadb@pitt.edu

Survey Methodology and Preliminary Conclusions



Field Methods

Our specific reasons for conducting intensive, local surveys on the Talgar landscape have been to inventory and document the range of sites found on the Talgar fan from the Bronze Age through the Medieval period, as well as to understand ancient patterns of land use and settlement in terms of a model of agro-pastoralism (mixed herding and farming).

To this end, we carried out: (1) systematic archaeological field walking in ploughed fields and along river, canal, and ancient stream profiles; (2) limited test trenching; and (3) detailed geomorphological descriptions and analysis of natural profile cuts that contain archaeological materials (the analyses include dating of deposits with radiocarbon samples, palynology, soilÂ’ analyses, and spectral analyses of mineral trace elements). Since we await the final results from our geomorphological research we focus primarily on how archaeological findings and the discipline of geomorphology can contribute to more accurate understandings of the land surfaces used by ancient peoples for over four millennia.

The re-surfacing and plowing of land surfaces in a heavily cultivated area such as the Talgar alluvial fan has radically affected the nature of archaeological deposits on the modern surface. In addition, the impact of modern-day agriculture has disturbed the water borne and wind blown deposits on the fan. An archaeological site on such plowed or re-contoured surfaces may appear quite obvious such as the burial mounds or kurgans that stand one to five or six meters above the ground as human-made hillocks, or may be barely visible. In fact, the settlement sites where people actually lived or camped are the hardest places to find. They are buried underneath 30 cm to over 1.5 m of loess soils in some areas of the fan.

We began to walk in plowed fields in the fall of 1997 when a small number of ceramic scatters were found. During the fall of 1997 plowing was only 20 cm deep and the soil was very dry, thus the surface visibility of artifacts was low. The Spring of 1998 was wet. Often fields were plowed twice and often to a depth of 40 cm. Thus, the surface visibility of artifacts (bones and ceramics) was quite high. The spring rains also helped to remove the soil matrix from sherds and bones lying on the surface. In the spring of 1998 we found new settlement sites of the Iron Age period in the vicinity of the current and ancient stream beds of the Tseganka River. The fall of 1998 was similar in weather conditions to the previous fall, however, aided by our experience of the previous spring survey, we were able to locate more sites than we did during the first fall's survey. One way of determining the optimal time for site survey might be to re-survey the areas at different times of the year and under different conditions to see if visibility is greater. Revisits to several of site locales resulted in finding few to no artifacts on the surface as a result of shallow plowing, crop cover or dry dusty conditions.

The outline of how we carried out fieldwork is as follows:

Survey transects were dependent on the existence of plowed fields. As a result, surveys had to be conducted in the fall (after the harvest) and spring (before planting). The opportunistic nature of the survey was based on the availability of plowed fields. With privatization of government collectives some lands that had not been plowed in over 30 years, have been re-cultivated. Old abandoned apple orchards have been removed and made into truck gardens, adding new areas for survey. Unplowed grazing areas were examined in the early Spring after the snow had melted and before the agricultural fields were plowed and dry enough to walk. An additional 30 kurgans were mapped and potential site locations were noted in the event that the land should be later plowed.

Transect locations were carefully monitored to avoid re-surveying areas previously examined with the exception of a few selected areas of probable site locations, but poor surface visibility. Our transects were separated by a minimum of 250 meters.


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