Excavations of residential estates at the Talgar settlement

The Talgar detachment of the Semirechye expedition of the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR continued excavations of residential estates at the Talgar settlement. Along the street stretching from north to south along the right bank of the Talgar River, three more estates (VI-VIII) were discovered, and thus the study of the residential area was completed.

The construction of estates is traditional: a residential part of one or two rooms with tandoors, two or three utility rooms (storerooms, granary granaries) and a yard with cattle pens. In the western part of the estates, oriented by the long side along the line west-east, there was housing, in the eastern part - a courtyard. There was only one exit and led through passages in the western wall to the street. The thickness of the inner walls is 0.6-0.8. The estates, surrounded by thick (1-1.2 m wide) clay walls on a foundation of large cobblestones, fastened with a clay solution, were separated from one another by a blank wall and a long narrow corridor.

Estate VI is distinguished by a large (90 sq. m) barnyard with covered pens and a stable with a manger for horses, partially covered by light shed, and estate VII by the presence of a large (61 sq. m) barn with nine granary compartments. In estate VIII, as in the previously excavated estate II, there was a yurt in the courtyard. Its round clay base with a diameter of 5.80 m and a height of about 0.15 m, surrounded by stones, was cleared. The existence of yurts in the yards of city estates is evidence of the pastoral and agricultural way of life traditional for this region.

During the excavations, glazed and unglazed ceramics, items and ornaments made of bone, stone, glass and metal were collected. Of interest are the glazed clay figurine of a horse and a bronze lamp. In general, the material allows us to date the estates of the 10th-12th centuries.