Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- 1. Introduction -- The time-honored problem of 'the nomad' -- Nomadic confederacy or polity on the Talgar fan -- The case study -- How I came to study Saka-Wusun settlements and the burial mounds of Talgar -- My premises -- Notes -- Bibliography -- 2. Natural and cultural landscapes of the Talgar alluvial fan: The natural landscape -- Cyclical climatic changes in the Late Holocene -- Human-environment interactions -- Cultural landscape of the Eurasian nomadic world of the First Millennium BC -- Saka kurgans and the nomadic world of eastern Inner Asia -- Burial complexes in Siberia, the Altai, and east Kazakhstan -- Semirech'ye: Bes Shatyr, Issyk, Turgen, and Talgar burial complexes -- Who were the Iron Age people of Talgar? -- Survey archaeology -- The chronological framework of the Talgar settlements -- Summary -- Notes -- Bibliography -- 3. Everyday lives in the Talgar settlements -- Settlement sites -- Faunal remains -- Plant remains -- Farming in the Talgar region -- Settled life: a comparison of the three settlement sites -- Crafting objects, crafting selves -- Animal husbandry in the Talgar region -- Milk, wool or hair, animal dung, and animal traction at Iron Age settlements -- Dairying -- Wool production -- Traction -- Horses as commodities -- Seasonality indicators from sheep teeth at the settlement of Tuzusai -- Hunting and fishing -- Feasting, rituals with animal sacrifice, and animals in burial contexts -- Scheduling, seasonality, and mixed herding and farming systems on the Talgar alluvial fan in the Middle to Late Iron Age -- Notes -- Bibliography -- 4. Time, space, and demographic change in Talgar -- Chronological comparisons between the Semirech'ye Iron Age and the Chinese dynasties