ABSTRACT
The natural and cultural landscapes of Talgar contributed to the multi-resource economy practiced by the ancient Talgar folk. During the Late Holocene when ancient agropastoralists occupied the Talgar region, the temperate climate and environmental conditions were similar to the present. The Talgar region's dramatic landscape of glacier-peaked mountains, foothills, and alluvial fan must be placed within the larger geographic context of the Semirech'ye region of southeastern Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan. Moreover, the chronological framework based primarily upon the relative and absolute dating of archaeological materials from burial mounds or cemeteries has been incomplete for Semirech'ye and Kazakhstan in general. The archaeological discoveries of Iron Age aristocratic elite found in Siberia and Kazakhstan confirm the historian's view of the nomadic elite as military leaders. In the late 1990s and throughout the past decade, Kazakh archaeologist Zainolla Samashev has excavated the frozen burial kurgans.
