Negative Effects of Late Bronze Age Human Activity on Modern Soils and Landscapes, a Case study on the Muradymovo Settlement, Urals, Russia
The study site is the Late Bronze Age (1750 1350 BC cal) settlement of Muradymovo located in the Urals, Russia (53deg58'44.8' N, 55deg30'58.8' E) Despite the presence of a humid climate, the modern soils of the study site contain more than 27% of gypsum at a depth of just 10 cm from the surface and have a microrelief typical of a gypsum desert. The nearby background Chernozems are gypsum free to a depth of 2 metres. The ancient people of the "Srubno Alakul" archaeological culture had a tradition of building their houses from gypsum rock. This is an excellent construction material in dry climates, but dissolves quickly under humid conditions. According to the archaeological data, the ancient people rebuilt their houses more than five times within a period of 200 years, thereby bringing a lot of gypsum to this site, which was later abandoned. At the present time, this area is still unsuitable for human settlement, because the water of the nearest small river is still contaminated by gypsum and has a bitter taste. The properties of modern soils directly affected by Late Bronze Age human activities have been identified as a result of our studies on soil morphology and chemistry (pH, Corg. Ptot, gypsum and calcium carbonate concentrations) Remarkably, there is residual soil contamination by gypsum even after 3,500 years since the abandonment of the site. IANSA 2016 VII/2 169 178 Alexandra Golyeva, Olga Khokhlova, Nikolai Shcherbakov, Iia Shuteleva: Negative Effects of Late Bronze Age Human Activity on Modern Soils and Landscapes, a Case study on the Muradymovo Settlement, Urals, Russia 170 data (Shcherbakov et al. 2013; Shcharbakov et al. 2015) the Muradymovo people belonged to the "Srubno Alakul" culture of the Late Bronze Age and came here from an extra arid semidesert region of the southern Kazakhstan, where they used to build their houses of gypsum rock. There is a deposit of gypsum rock just 5 km away from the Muradymovo settlement site. Gypsum is an excellent construction material in the driest parts of arid regions, for example, within depressions that remain from former inland lakes or seas (Rosen, Warren 1990; Bolen et al. 1991) However, in humid climates gypsum is soluble and houses made of it undergo rapid degradation. The residual piles of gypsum rock account for the appearance of the aforementioned hillocky microrelief of the study site (Slavnyi 2003) A similar microrelief typically occurs in deserts (Gorbunova 1977; Watson 1985; Eckardt et.al. 2001; Warren 2006) but would not be expected to be found in this humid region of Urals. In addition, the ancient settlement site Muradymovo is located on a hill, and not within a depression. The aim of our study was to investigate the properties of modern soils at the Bronze Age settlement site and understand more about the factors that led to their formation and transformation. 2. Materials and methods