Concealed Evidence of Early Human-Environment Interactions in Sedimentary Archives of Small Rivers in the Forest-Steppe Belt of Eurasia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The results of on-site archaeological investigations alone are not enough to reconstruct landscape histories, because they provide incomplete information on past environments. In contrast, off-site sedimentary archives can provide information on the interaction of natural and human processes that modify the landscape. Our initial research on the sedimentary archives in small river valleys in the forest-steppe zone of the Mid-Volga region provides information on the sequential development of the landscape throughout the Holocene. Our regional investigation includes several fluvial settings. The first setting occurs in the lower reaches of a tributary of the Sura River, where evidence of three occupation surfaces are interbedded with levee and overbank deposits. The second setting occurs in the Kiremet River, a low-gradient meadow stream exposed by channel incision, where evidence of five occupations exists in its stratigraphic sequence. The third setting occurs in a deep, narrow tributary valley of the Sviyaga River, with a substantial sedimentary record associated with ore mining. The sequences of events interpreted from the sedimentation, soil formation, and evidence of fire reveal complicated relations between climatic changes and different forms of land use change by post-Neolithic peoples. In this paper, we discuss some preliminary results and our methodological strategies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25535