This project has reconstructed the palaeogeographic and environmental evolution of Lake Chokrak on the Kerch Peninsula, Ukraine, during the mid‐ and late‐Holocene. This record has been evaluated in association with a regional archaeological data set to explore human–environment interactions over this period. The results show major changes in the palaeogeographic setting of Lake Chokrak since the 3rd millennium B.C., when the postglacial marine transgression had started to fill the study area. Microfaunal analyses reveal the long persistence of an open marine embayment that only became separated from the Sea of Azov when a sand barrier developed during the late 2nd millennium B.C. When colonizing the Black Sea region after the 8th century B.C., the Greek settlers erected a fortification with a small settlement on a promontory that was by then a peninsula‐like headland extending into the lake. The colonists abandoned their settlement at the end of the 1st millennium B.C. when the depth of the surrounding lake decreased from 1.5 m to less than 1 m. Today, Lake Chokrak dries up completely during summer. A detailed relative sea level (RSL) curve for the northern coast of Kerch has been established. Sea level reached its highest position at the present day. Since the 3rd millennium B.C., sea level continuously rose, without any of the previously postulated regression/transgression cycles. The RSL curve indicates differential subsidence rates within short distances in relatively stable areas, exceeding 40 cm per 1000 years. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.