ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the archaeological evidence of daily life in the region as well as the more widely known kurgans in the Talgar fan. The contrast between the everyday lives of the Talgar folk and their elaborate mortuary practices points to social stratification and the distance between the commoners and the aristocratic elite. Despite evidence of a long tradition of pastoralism in greater Eurasia as far back as the Bronze Age, the findings of the architectural evidence of house pits, rectangular mudbrick or adobe building foundations, and mudbrick architecture at the three excavated Talgar settlement sites, namely Tuzusai, Tseganka 8, and Taldy Bulak 2, prove permanent dwellings were used by the agropastoralists of Semirech'ye. In the magnetogram of Area 1 located due west of the excavated portions of Tuzusai, there were at least ten pithouses, ten storage pits, and four possible hearths or fireplaces.
