Soil-archaeological characteristic of the archaeological settlement Kalmykovka I in the Samara Volga Region

The paper publishes the results of soil research on the archaeological site – the settlement of the Neolithic and Bronze age Kalmykovka I located in the Krasnoyarsk district of the Samara Region. The paper briefly describes the archaeological site. Its cultural identity and the absolute age of the found artifacts are indicated. The morphological studies and analysis of the physical and the chemical properties of the modern soils, soil-forming rocks and cultural archaeological layers were carried out at the key site The taxonomic difference in soils was identified, related to the anthropogenic transformation of the soil in the middle and late Holocene. The physical properties of soils, and in particular, the granulometric composition, acquire lighter fractions in the direction from the watershed to the river terraces and slopes. Such pattern is recorded on other archaeological sites in the Middle Volga Region. The meandering of riverbed and the change in the level of rivers at different time intervals of the Holocene leaded to a change in the granulometric composition of the territory of the riverbed and river terrace. The preliminary results showed that an ancient man accounted for: a geographical location, a landscape exposure, the riverbed and the river level while arranging the settlement Kalmykovka I in different periods of the Holocene. The change in the paleogeographic situation on the given territory from the Middle Holocene to the Late one apparently influenced the river level content of the Sok River and its riverbed, which forced the generations of people to move the settlement deep into the watershed surface.