Excavations of a residential estate on Talgar

The Talgar detachment of the Semirechye expedition conducted excavations at the medieval settlement of Talgar, on a site of urban development 50 m south of the central part of the settlement, on the first floodplain terrace of the Talgar River. An excavation (300 sq. m.) unearthed a city estate. Its residential part, numbering seven rooms, is built deep into the ground, the foundation of the walls of cobblestones and boulders on clay mortar. Clay smoothed and uneven masonry. Stones with a diameter of 0.4–0.6 m were laid at the base of the inner walls of the house, the base of the outer walls was made of larger boulders and rectangular stone slabs m). Three of the seven rooms were intended for housing, the rest were auxiliary (pantries, barns with bins). In one of the living quarters, there was an oval-shaped hearth on the floor, in the other two there were four tandoors embedded in a sufa 0.45 m high. The best-preserved is the southern side of the 1.3 m high fence with four rows of stones. The courtyard's surface is at the same level or slightly higher than the floor of the living quarters. The area of ​​the yard is free from buildings.

During the excavations of the estate, mainly fragments of unglazed ceramic dishes, metal items (fragments of knives, a hinged hook, two decorative buckles, a pendant, hairpins, a bracelet), glasses and bones were collected. Pot-shaped vessels predominate in pottery. Two fragments of the walls of dish-shaped vessels, several fragments of massive bottoms of mortars (the bottom of one has a cuff-like molding with tucks), five pieces with glaze (dark green, yellow-brown, white) were found. A bowl fragment on a ring base is decorated with red-brown paint under transparent glaze. Such dishes are typical for the 11th - early 13th centuries. The pottery of the estate as a whole is similar to the pottery complexes from the previous excavations of Talgar and the settlements of the North-Eastern Semirechye, which gives reason to date the estate to the 11th - the beginning of the 13th century.