During archaeological excavations of a medieval stronghold in Rozprza, a buried thick deposit of deep black (Dark Earth type) soil was discovered. A multianalytical (sedimentological, geochemical and archaeobotanical) study was carried out in order to identify traits the Rozprza Dark Earth. The analyses demonstrated that the soil was formed as an effect of surface accumulation of organic deposits from swampy areas and waste materials with rich admixtures of organic materials. The organic carbon content of the soil of the Rozprza Dark Earth was twice as high, and the total concentration of P was many times higher as compared with the adjacent soil outside the stronghold. Plant macroremains which were recorded within the buried soil and a cultural layer are evidence for human activity, mainly wood gathering and agriculture. In the Early Middle Ages, summer crops could be cultivated there with the use of tilling methods characteristic for root crops or gardens. The accumulation of the Rozprza Dark Earth commenced in the second half of the tenth century AD. In the period between the eleventh and thirteenth century, a ring-fort was established there. The deep black soil is partly covered by the ring-fort's rampart. The rampart was built with the use of re-deposited earlier cultural layers and sand of the subsoil. It was then clad with sod bricks. Such a construction of a medieval rampart has been recorded for the first time in the territory of Poland. A new interpretation of archaeological structures and cultural layers offers a basis for new conclusions concerning the chronology and the development stages of the medieval settlement and ring-fort in Rozprza.
ZusammenfassungDer Siedlungsplatz Čiča ist ein Schlüsselfundplatz für das Verständnis der westsibirischen Spätbronze- und Früheisenzeit. Von besonderer Bedeutung ist dabei die umfangreiche Serie von Radiokohlenstoffdaten, über deren Interpretation in der Literatur allerdings kein Konsens herrscht. Kontrovers diskutiert wird insbesondere die chronologische Stellung der späten Stufe der Irmen’-Kultur, die eng mit der Frage nach einem Hiatus in der Besiedlung von Čiča zusammenhängt. Die Beantwortung dieser Frage bildet die Grundlage für weitreichende kulturgeschichtliche Aussagen. Die chronologische Modellierung der Radiokohlenstoffdaten mit Bayes’scher Statistik unterstützt die archäologische Hypothese des Hiatus. Zur Beschreibung der Validität des Ergebnisses werden neben Signifikanzanalysen anhand von Simulationen auch Sensitivitätsprüfungen des Modells für eventuelle unerkannte Unsicherheiten und Fehler vorgenommen. Die derartige kritische Überprüfung der Modellierung ist als integraler Bestandteil der Methode unerlässlich.
Today the East-European forest-steppe is an agricultural landscape with very few remains of the former natural vegetation. The history of the transformation from natural vegetation to a human-made landscape in the area of Sudzha (Kursk region, Russia) is studied here. Therefore, we compare the off-site pollen record Sudzha with three on-site pollen records obtained from the archaeological site Kurilovka-2. The sediment core Sudzha covering the last 2500 years was taken from an oxbow lake in an area with archaeological sites of the early Slavonic period (3 rd-8 th cent. CE). The Sudzha pollen record indicates dominance of broadleaf forests and meadow steppes in the area from 2500 to 200 cal yr BP with two major settlement phases one between ~2000 and 1600 cal yr BP (~50 BCE to 350 CE) and the other between 1100 and 600 cal yr BP (850 to 1350 CE) followed by a total deforestation and transformation to an agricultural landscape over the last 200-300 years. Noteworthy, however, the record Sudzha does not provide an intensive signal of human impact during the main settlement period of Kurilovka-2 (3 rd-8 th cent. CE). This points to a quite restricted spatial influence of the Early Slavonic settlements on the vegetation, leading to a relative low contribution of palynological anthropogenic indicators to the regional pollen rain signal.
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