Opening and exploitation of a typical landscape in the Don forest steppe during the 3rd mill. BC

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Elke Kaiser
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 421312759

The project will investigate a microregion in the forest steppe zone of European Russia. It will contribute to our knowledge about the subsistence basis, the exploitation of the surrounding environment and the mobility patterns of the pastoralists in the forest steppe in the 2nd half of the 3rd mill BC, about which researchers still know very little, notwithstanding the fact that this period and these regions figure prominently in discourse about the emergence of mobile pastoralism. The project centres around the site Ksizovo № 1(close to the modern village Ksizovo), 500 km south of Moscow. Ksizovo № 1 reveals only one cultural layer, dated using absolute methods to 2600–2300 cal BC. Finds from this layer include ceramic fragments characteristic of the regional Don variant of the Catacomb culture. As third mill. BC settlements in the steppe or forest steppe containing only a single cultural layer are quite rare, the investigation of Ksizovo № 1 has the potential to be extremely rewarding. Recognizing that it is essential to study the site as thoroughly as possible, and thus to obtain as much varied and revealing data as possible, including both proxy and archaeological data, this project will intensify, supplement and support the excavation that already began there in 2014. It will pursue a rigorous multidisciplinary approach during and flanking the excavation and in the analysis and interpretation of all results. Thus, geomorphological, sedimentological research and archaeobotanical (incl. complementary phytolith analysis) analyses will generate proxy data on seasonal mobility and the subsistence basis of the inhabitants. Organic residue analysis of a pilot series of pottery sherds will give us insight into the diet of the inhabitants; within another pilot study, the oxygen and strontium isotope ratios in sequentially sampled cattle teeth might reveal patterns providing insight into seasonal movements of mobile pastoralists. Ksizovo № 1 is located between the upper course of the river Don and its tributary Snova and is only one of eight settlements in the microregion that were inhabited during the second half of the 3rd mill. BC. The microregion also contains two flat grave cemeteries of the Catacomb culture. The project will include a review of all of the materials found during excavation and field walking at all of these sites. The assessment of the material culture from them will allow their synchronisation. If, as we presume to be the case, at least some of them existed contemporaneously, the possibility exists that these settlements were used seasonally by a single population. Combining the results of the archaeological investigations with the results of the natural science analyses culminate in the development of models concerning the spatial organisation in the region in this particular period.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Russia
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Evgenii Gak, until 3/2022