Abrupt environmental change and depopulation of Upper Volga lowland, Central Russia, around 2, 600 BP
by
Raisa Gracheva
Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia
Coauthors: Sorokin Aleksey (Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia)

New data concerning the environmental change in Holocene, which determined tactic of settlement, stages and ways of nature use in Central Russia, were obtained, and reconstruction of chronology of colonisation of Upper Volga region was made. It is shown that around 2,600 14C BP economical activity of early human society within Upper Volga lowland was interrupted by rapid and total flooding.

Multilayer archaeological sites located in the southern part of Upper Volga lowland were studied, using detailed stratigraphic analysis, palaeobotanical methods and radiocarbon dating. Sites studied are situated in the vast lowland peat developed on a former bottom of periglacial lake Tverskoye, which remnants are existing now as the small shallow lakes.

The first steps of colonisation of area followed the reduction of palaeolake water body and occurred not later than 10,300 14C BP (ca. 10,250 calendar years BC). All well drained plots were occupied immediately after successive drainage of lake bottom, and archaeological vestiges of the most ancient in this region Mesolithic Resseta culture confirm this. The further colonisation by fishermen and hunters left sequence of cultural layers from Mesolithic to Neolithic and Halcholithic ages.

Around 2,600 14C BP (ca. 750-800 cal. BC) lake-level rising and total flooding caused the depopulation and collapse of economy life through vast lowland area bordered on Klin-Dmitrov Heights. There are different evidences of sharp change of environment, and, first of all, disappearance of archaeological findings above Halcholithic cultural layer. Only single fragments of cancellated ceramics of Late Bronze Age are found in the overlying lake deposits. Well preserved morphology of buried soil, abrupt and clear expressed boundary between buried soils and overlying layer, and data of palaeobotanical analyses give the supplementary evidences of rapid environmental change, which can be considered as regional catastrophe. Area was abandoned until lake-level decreasing around 1900 14C BP (ca. 120 cal. AD), when the wet plain was formed and was visited episodically by fishermen and hunters. Present peatland began to form and use as agricultural land not later 730 14C BP (ca. 1300 AD, IGAN-2334).

New findings essentially change the existing concepts of nature and human society development within Upper Volga region.

Date received: March 9, 2002