Holocene pedogenesis peculiarities of the Early Bronze Age settlement near the village of Malchivtsi (the Bar district of the Vinnytsia region)

Abstract

The paper concerns the issue of using paleopedological data in order to reconstruct the ancient Man environments during the different periods of the Holocene. The soil sections, located within the ancient settlement (the excavation №1) and outside it (the excavation №2, the modern soil), have been studied at the archeological site of the Early Bronze Age in the Bar district of the Vinnytsia region, 150 m SW of the Murafa River and 1 km SW of the Malchivtsi village. The samples were taken for grain-size, bulk chemical, and micromorphological analyses, and large-scale field sketches with smears of natural material were made. Micromorphology of soil genetic horizons has been analyzed in sections with intact structure. Podzolization, lessivage, and clay weathering were the main processes in the soil formation (excavation №1) that allows to define it as transitional between Greyzem and Luvisol. The fact that the soil profile includes a large number of ‘krotovinas’, and carbonate material is present in some of them indicates that the carbonate horizon was located at a small depth below the soil.The settlement existed under predominance of forest landscapes of a fairly humid climate, as it is evidenced by the soil profile. The modern soil was studied in order to compare it with the paleosol of the settlement. According to macro- and micromorphological features, the modern soil can be defined as brown- podzolic forest, which humus-eluvial horizon is depleted in organic-iron material and it includes a huge number of light “washed” areas without typical complex aggregates. Thus, the features of ancient and modern soils indicate their formation in a humid, moderately warm climate of the forest-steppe zone. However, the profile of the ancient soil of the settlement, formed on the sandy substrate, was better differentiated into the eluvial and illivial genetic horizons. It has a significant number of ‘krotovinas’ and the features typical for cultivated soils. If the ancient soil is more similar to the podzolic soils, which at present spread to the north of the studied area, the modern soil, formed on loamy substrate, is closer to the Luvisol but still with the features of podsolization. This soil type evidences a wetter climate regime as compared to the ancient soil. The features of lessivage may indicate the dominance of deciduous (beech-hornbeam) forests in this area (the composition of their leaf mould is enriched in carbonates).