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Talgar Alluvial Fan Dataset |
Comparative |
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Survey Methodology and Preliminary Conclusions |
As a result of our walking surveys started during the fall of 1997 and halted in May of 1999, we were able to designate over 480 waypoint locations in a 180 km² area.
These locations include: intact kurgans, damaged kurgans in plowed fields, single artifact finds (pottery sherd, grinding stone), small scatters of animal bones and pottery, and actual settlement sites, including:
Our survey results prove that Saka and later Iron Age settlements existed on the Talgar fan. The fan itself, with its many streams channels and rich reworked loess soils, must have been an extremely fertile oasis for the ancient Iron Age society.
We would expect that the actual site density of Iron Age settlements is far higher than 55 settlements per 180 km² (a density of 0.3 sites per km²). It is very difficult to find the Iron Age settlements of Talgar because many of these sites are buried under 50 cm to 1 m or more of alluvial soils. Unless an agricultural field has been deeply plowed or the cultural level of a site appears in a river, irrigation, or erosion channel, most archaeological sites of the Iron Age are invisible. Tseganka 8 is a case in point. This extremely important site with architectural remains of three pit houses was seen in the profile of the stream cut, and not by sherds in the field above it. It may be for these same reasons that we have not found Bronze Age sites. A Bronze Age site may be even more deeply buried or represent small settlements scattered over a large territory. In either case, such settlement sites would be very difficult to find using our survey methods.
At the end of the 1999 survey season, in mid-May, we had completed 287 transects across the Talgar Fan. These transects varied in length from 180 m to 1.54 km. The average length of transects was about 500 m. If we estimate our transects as being 10 m wide we can say that we surveyed about 1 km² of the fan or about 0.5% of the survey area. One hundred and fourteen of these transects (40% ) were devoid of sites or artifacts.
We also have recorded the number of kurgans on two series of Soviet-period topographic maps— (the 1:50,000 scale maps and the 1:25,000 scale maps). The different scale maps show differences in the number of kurgans (Table). Many more kurgan locations were recorded on the 1:25,000 scale maps of the Talgar Fan than on the 1:50,000 scale maps. More than twice the number of kurgans were found on the larger scale maps. There may be several reasons for this: (1) the 1:25,000 scale maps were more accurate in recording archaeological sites; (2) the 1:25,000 scale maps were made in 1959 and 1960, while the 1:50,000 scale maps were made 20 years later, when many of the kurgans had been previously destroyed by modern construction and agriculture. The High Energy Physics Laboratory was also built in the area of 11 kurgans shown on the 1959 maps.
The table also shows the difference between the density of kurgans per km². Notice that west of the Talgar River the density of kurgans is 0.96 kurgans per km² for the 1:25,000 scale series and 0.35 kurgans per km² for the 1:50,000 scale series. East of the Talgar River the density of kurgans is 2.69 kurgans per km² for the 1:25,000 scale maps and 1.31 kurgan per km² for the 1:50,000 scale maps. This demonstrates a much higher density of kurgans on the east side of the Talgar River than on the west side. There are several obvious reasons for this: (1) the corridor along the east side of the Talgar River was a place where many Iron Age kurgans were found thus making the density of the kurgans on this side of the river far higher than on the west side; (2) the Talgar River was the major source of water in this area, therefore if kurgans had political and social significance as well as religious and ideological importance to the ancient Saka, clearly the terraces along the Talgar River were the most important areas to claim as valuable territories. West of the Talgar River, smaller streams like Tseganka were rich in archaeological sites and kurgans. Soviet period agriculture changed the water flow patterns on the fan. Today, the water for Tseganka originates from an irrigation channel across from the site of Medieval Talgar. Any Iron Age occupants wishing to control the major water resources of the Talgar Fan probably chose to establish their territorial claim first at the throat of the Talgar River where the alluvial fan originates. The stream channel of the Talgar River is deeply incised (10-15 meters) for the first 10 km where it cuts into the fan. However, no large Iron Age settlements have been found in this area, although local archaeologists report the existence of an Iron Age component beneath the occupation levels of Medieval Talgar.
During the early summer of 1999, aerial photographs (1:20,000 scale) from the mid-1950's were examined. A large section of our survey area, 8 km north south and 10 km east-west were covered by these aerial photographs. Preliminary examination of the aerial photographs show that there has been considerable surface modification of the fan since the 1950's. When the Bolshoi Almatinski Kanal (BAK) was built the adjacent fields were leveled for more efficient irrigation agriculture. Field evidence indicates that prior to the introduction of cement-lined canals, unlined canal channels were used. Fast moving water flowing through these channels rapidly eroded the channels to a depth of 2-3 m. When a channel was too deeply incised to water the adjoining fields, another channel was dug a few meters away. The existence of many of these parallel channels alongside modern cement-lined channels is apparent on the aerial photographs. As a result of 50 years of Soviet agriculture the alluvial fan has numerous small human-made channels. Many channels have been filled in so that large-scale agriculture can be practiced with mechanized machinery. This low-tech method of irrigation using earthen channels is still practiced at the present time.
Examination of the aerial photos also resulted in the identification of 309 kurgans. This is almost twice as many as marked on the 1960 1:25,000 Soviet topographic map, an area almost 30% smaller. An additional 109 anomalies in the fields suggest even more kurgans or settlement sites. One of the anomalies happens to fall on the location of Taldy Bulak 3, a Saka/Wuson Period site, where we have surface collected large amounts of ceramics, bones, grinding stones, and fragments of burnt clay. The excavation of a 1 x 2 m test pit on this site uncovered a plastered floor and pits at this site.