Approaches to the reconstruction of dynamic of the territory occupation according to the soil signs

The dynamics of human settling Samarskaya Luka (Volga bend) area adjacent to the Zhiguli archaeological site and burial ground has been studied by analyzing both the cultural layer of the monument and the soil strata in the adjacent ravine. Seven erosion and accumulation cycles have been distinguished in the ravine development during the Holocene, correlated with periods of the water catchment area development. Each cycle used to start with forest fires, leading to an increase in runoff and ravine cutting-in, and to complete with surface stabilization as grassland or forest was reestablished. The length of periods between changes of land use varied from a few decades in the agricultural cycles of the early Middle Ages, up to several hundred years in the nomadic-pastoral cycles of the Eneolithic ? the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the late Middle Ages. Vegetation changed within each cycle, as human utilization of the watershed resulted in elimination of the understory, reduction of tree species variety, an increase in the proportion of conifers, and, due to combination of fire and grazing, led to deforestation. A lengthy deforestation period occurred in the mid-Holocene (Eneolithic ? early Bronze Age). A new period of progressive deforestation and open space growth started in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. Discontinuities in human occupation lasting a few hundred years observed in the mid-Holocene. Shorter breaks (less than a century) took place between the Scythian-Gorodets period and the Imenkovo-Khazar period, later between the Khazar period and the Bulgarian period, and in that preceding Russian colonization of the Samara Luka area in the 16th century.