Tracing land use history using a combination of soil charcoal and soil pollen analysis: An example from colluvial deposits of the Middle Volga region

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd Gully deposits were studied in the vicinity of Early Medieval archaeological sites in the Volga River Bend region, Russia. Anthropogenic and natural causes of erosion were distinguished by a novel combination of sedimentological, palynological, and pedoanthracological methods. Within the 10 ka-old colluvial fan sequence deposited in the forest-steppe zone, sedimentation rates are reconstructed as negligible in the first half of the Holocene, increasing drastically in the first centuries AD. Seven episodes of erosion and stabilization were distinguished, each beginning with the deposition of coarser sediments enriched in charcoal and gravel. Erosional events were followed by local deforestation; tree taxa found in charcoal assemblages of each cycle generally mirrored the taxa of the previous cycle in the pollen spectra. The cycles chronologically matched known archaeological occupations in the area. First portions of colluvia in the sequence (1st to 3rd cent. AD) contained seeds of zoochores indicative of livestock husbandry; from the 3rd century AD to 16th cent. AD, colluvia contained micro-artifacts (1–20 mm), pollen of cultivated plants and their weeds, and pollen of taxa typical for trails and drove ways. We reconstruct a change in the type of cultivation techniques from pollen spectra in the gully deposits. Cerealia and Onagraceae pollen indicative of swidden agriculture is present in the 3rd-6th cent. AD, while Cerealia, Fagopyrum, Centaurea cyanus pollen and Riccia spores in the 8th- 14th cent. AD are evidence of permanent fields within the catchment

Elite burial of the golden horde era in the samara volga region: Man, horses and ritual complex

The article presents some preliminary results of a comprehensive study of a unique archaeological site of the Golden Horde time - a single burial mound Svetloe Pole III, excavated in the Samara region in 2020.In the only burial, despite the destruction, extraordinary objects have been preserved: a massive (gilded) bronze belt overlay with the image of a dragon, a horn pommel depicting a bird of prey gnawing at a large bird - possibly a bustard; gold earrings and stripes into clothes, coins, iron arrowheads (some of them gilded), etc.The sub-kurgan area was surrounded by a wooden ring structure 15 m in diameter, on the eastern side of which there was a sacrificial complex with 14 skulls of horses without lower jaws.The anthropological study showed that the buried man, 50-60 years old, of the Mongoloid anthropological type, had numerous pathologies.Interesting paleozoological observations were made when analyzing bone remains of the animals found not only on the sacrificial site, but also in the filling of the mound

Ten millennia of hepatitis B virus evolution

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been infecting humans for millennia and remains a global health problem, but its past diversity and dispersal routes are largely unknown. We generated HBV genomic data from 137 Eurasians and Native Americans dated between ~10,500 and ~400 years ago. We date the most recent common ancestor of all HBV lineages to between ~20,000 and 12,000 years ago, with the virus present in European and South American hunter-gatherers during the early Holocene. After the European Neolithic transition, Mesolithic HBV strains were replaced by a lineage likely disseminated by early farmers that prevailed throughout western Eurasia for ~4000 years, declining around the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. The only remnant of this prehistoric HBV diversity is the rare genotype G, which appears to have reemerged during the HIV pandemic