The origins of terraced field agriculture in the Caucasus: new discoveries in the Kislovodsk basin

Abstract

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0003598X00049887How to cite this article: Dmitry S. Korobov and Alexander V. Borisov (2013). The origins of terraced eld agriculture in the Caucasus: new discoveries in the Kislovodsk basin. Kislovodsk basin 0 km 400 N Turkey Iran Iraq G eo rg ia Azerbaijan A Ukraine Kazakhstan n Russia A r m e n ia n i n ia Terraced field systems are a feature of many regions of the world and have been dated as early as 6000 cal BC in the Levant (Kuijt et al. in Antiquity 81 (2007: 106-18)). The discovery of agricultural terraces in the northern Caucasus, reported here, extends their distribution into a new area. Relatively low population levels in the late medieval and early modern periods have preserved several blocks of terraced fields, some of them created at the beginning of the first millennium BC, others in the mid first millennium AD. The earlier terraced fields, associated with material and settlements of the Koban culture, culminated in over-exploitation of the land and exacerbated erosion during environmental change in the mid first millennium BC. The later series of terraced fields are of different form and are associated with the settlement in the area of communities of Alans in the first millennium AD. They largely avoided the areas rendered infertile by Koban period overexploitation. The morphology and chronology of the terraced field systems are explored using a combination of aerial photography, GIS analysis and field investigations.

The Origins of Terracing in the Southern Levant and Patch Cultivation/Box Fields

“…Clearly, on methodological grounds, the dating of agricultural field systems, specifically terraces in highland regions, is a complicated procedure (Frederick & Krahtopoulou, 2000;Fall et al, 2012;Galletti et al, 2013;Bevan et al, 2013;Korobov & Borisov, 2013;Gibson, 2015). The assumption that terraces can only be dated when found in direct association with single-period farmhouses, or, alternatively, when the OSL method is applied to the internal deposits of terraces, have both been shown to be inaccurate (Gibson, 2015;Gibson & Lewis, 2017).…”

Buried Paleoanthrosols of the Bronze Age agricultural terraces in the Kislovodsk basin (Northern Caucasus, Russia)

“…The authors of present study present the research of terraced farming in the Kislovodsk basin since 2005, with data published previously Korobov, 2009, 2012;Korobov and Borisov, 2013). In these works, the peculiarities of terraced agriculture of the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Ages were established, and the ways of creation of terraces of different types were reconstructed.…”

“…In our previous work, we had shown three main types of agrarian land plots which may be recognized on aerial photography of the Kislovodsk basin (Korobov and Borisov, 2013). The first type is single, double, or triple large terraces with high border walls from A.V.…”

“…They form plots of 100e450 m length and in average about 10 m width. The height of the terrace border walls is about 1.5 m and never exceeds 2 m (Korobov and Borisov, 2013). The terraces of the second type were created by the population of the Alanic culture in the Middle Ages.…”

Indicators of agricultural soil genesis under varying conditions of land use, Steppe Crimea

“…Multidisciplinary investigations of the soil agrogenesis influenced by ancient arable agriculture have a very wide geography: Western Europe and particularly the Mediterranean (Ruecker et al, 1998;Sanchez-Maranon et al, 2002;Scalenghe et al, 2002;Delgado et al, 2007;Freppaz et al, 2008;Bellin et al, 2009;Stanchia et al, 2012); Eastern Europe, including its central part (Dolotov, 1984;Karavaeva, 2000;Polyakova and Platonycheva, 2012), the regions of Greco-Roman land use in Southern Ukraine (Lisetskii, 2008;Lisetskii and Rodionova, 2012) and the Crimea (Cordova and Lehman, 2005;Lisetskii et al, 2013) as well as the northern Caucasus (Korobov and Borisov, 2013); Asia Kostyuchenko and Lisitsyna, 1976;Gong et al, 2000;Wilkinson, 2003;Miyaji, 2003;Pietsch and Mabit, 2012); Africa (Mighall et al, 2012;Nyberg et al, 2012) and the New World (Sandor et al, 1990;Dick et al, 1994;Eash and Sandor, 1995;Sandor and Eash, 1995;Harden, 1996;Sandor, 2006;Goodman-Elgar, 2008;Londono, 2008;Homburg and Sandor, 2011;Fonte et al, 2012).…”