The Ceramics of Ekaterinovsky Сape Burial Ground (according to the materials of excavations 2013–2016 years)

The authors first publish the ceramics of the Ekaterinovsky Сape burial ground of the Early Eneolithic. The ceramics were predominantly located on sacrificial sites in the shape of compact clusters of fragments. As a rule, such clusters were located above the burials, sometimes over the burials. Some of them were sprinkled with ocher. The authors have selected more 70 vessels. Some of the vessels have been partially reconstructed. The ceramics was made with inclusion of the crushed shell into molding mass. The rims of vessels had the thickened «collar»; the bottoms had a rounded shape. The ornament was located on the rims and the upper part of the potteries. Fully decorated vessels are rare. The vessels are ornamented with prints of comb and rope stamps, with small pits. A particularity of ceramics ornamentation is presented by the imprints of soft stamps (leather?) or traces of leather form for the making of vessels. The ornamentation, made up of «walking comb» and incised lines, was used rarely as well as the belts of pits made decoration under «collar» of a rim. Some features of the ceramics decoration under study relate it with ceramics of the Khvalynsk culture. The ceramics of Ekaterinovsky Cape burial ground is attributed by the authors to the Samarskaya culture. The ceramic complex under study has proximity to the ceramics from Siezzhee burial ground and the ceramics of the second phase of Samarskaya culture. The chronological position is determined by the authors as later period, than the period of ceramics from the Siezzhee burial ground and earlier than the chronological position of ceramics of the Ivanovka stage of the Samarskaya culture and the Khvalynsk culture

Approaches to the reconstruction of dynamic of the territory occupation according to the soil signs

The dynamics of human settling Samarskaya Luka (Volga bend) area adjacent to the Zhiguli archaeological site and burial ground has been studied by analyzing both the cultural layer of the monument and the soil strata in the adjacent ravine. Seven erosion and accumulation cycles have been distinguished in the ravine development during the Holocene, correlated with periods of the water catchment area development. Each cycle used to start with forest fires, leading to an increase in runoff and ravine cutting-in, and to complete with surface stabilization as grassland or forest was reestablished. The length of periods between changes of land use varied from a few decades in the agricultural cycles of the early Middle Ages, up to several hundred years in the nomadic-pastoral cycles of the Eneolithic – the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the late Middle Ages. Vegetation changed within each cycle, as human utilization of the watershed resulted in elimination of the understory, reduction of tree species variety, an increase in the proportion of conifers, and, due to combination of fire and grazing, led to deforestation. A lengthy deforestation period occurred in the mid-Holocene (Eneolithic – early Bronze Age). A new period of progressive deforestation and open space growth started in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. Discontinuities in human occupation lasting a few hundred years observed in the mid-Holocene. Shorter breaks (less than a century) took place between the Scythian-Gorodets period and the Imenkovo-Khazar period, later between the Khazar period and the Bulgarian period, and in that preceding Russian colonization of the Samara Luka area in the 16th century