Natural conditions and sociocultural development in the Mid-Kama region (cis-Ural, Russia) over the last ten millennia: insights from the Shabunichi-1 peat core

Vegetation History and Archaeobotany https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-024-01025-4 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Natural conditions and sociocultural development in the Mid‑Kama region (cis‑Ural, Russia) over the last ten millennia: insights from the Shabunichi‑1 peat core Vlada Batalova1 · Pavel Sannikov2 · Mikhail Pereskokov2 · Vitaliy Mingalev3 · Leonid Vyazov4 · Julia Salova5 · Ekaterina Novikova2 · Elizaveta Mekhonoshina2 · Elizaveta Orlova2 · Lyudmila Shumilovskikh1 Received: 4 September 2024 / Accepted: 2 November 2024 © The Author(s) 2025 Abstract The Ural Mountains represent a distinctive bioecological and climatic boundary between Europe and Asia, simultaneously uniting them through cultural, ethnic, and economic ties throughout history. To investigate these complex human-environment interactions during the last ~ 10,000, we obtained a peat core Shabunichi-1 and analyzed it using AMS radiocarbon dating, loss-on-ignition, pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, micro- and macrocharcoal analyses. Our palaeoecological study demonstrate that climate and frequent fires were the main drivers of ecosystem change until ~ 4,000 cal bp. Dry climate conditions between ~ 9,300 and 7,400 cal bp resulted in the dominance of pine-birch forest-steppe as well as frequent local fires. Subsequent climate humification led to the expansion of broad-leaved-dark coniferous forests and a change in the fire regime, reducing the frequency and/or severity of fire events between ~ 7,400 and 5,100 cal bp. The peak in climatic humidity was reached between 5,100 and 3,900 cal bp, which favored the development of spruce forests with a greater admixture of broad-leaved species. After ~ 4,000 cal bp, anthropogenic impacts began to shape the appearance of regional ecosystems culminating in the maximum landscape openness during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The activities of Bronze Age cultures and the emergence of metallurgy and pastoralism in the region led to the strong decline of spruce forests and the spread of secondary pine-birch formations and meadows. Human impact during the Iron Age and the emergence of agriculture in the region caused the largest local fires and the reduction of interfluvial forests. Despite humans becoming the primary driver of ecosystem change in the second half of the Middle and Late Holocene, climate continued to play a critical role in triggering cultural transformations and migration processes in the region. Keywords Palynology · Non-pollen palynomorphs · Macrocharcoal · Loss-on-ignition · Settlement history · Kama Introduction Communicated by F. Bittmann. * Vlada Batalova 1 Georg-August-University Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany 2 Perm State University, Perm, Russia 3 Higher School of Economics, Perm, Russia 4 University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic 5 University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic Natural environment with close interdependence of its components such as climate, water, vegetation, and soils drives ecosystem dynamic, as the slightest change in one natural component affects the entire ecosystem. These changes in ecosystems are often considered as the leading trigger of cultural transformations in the pre-industrial era, alongside socio-economic and political factors. Issues of cultural transformations in the Ural region of Russia have long been a subject of scientific debate. The Urals have a vivid and complex history of economic development as a frontier zone between East Europe and Western Siberia. Key topics include early human colonization of the Urals during Paleolithic (Bader and Klein 1965; Svendsen et al. 2010; Serikov and Chlachula 2014), introduction of productive economy Vol.:(0123456789) Vegetation History and Archaeobotany (Korenyuk et al. 2018), social and cultural development during the Bronze and Iron Ages (Koryakova and Epimakhov 2007; Chizhevsky 2013; Ivanov 2017; Pereskokov 2018), medieval period (Ivanov and Krylasova 2006; Ivanov et al. 2014) and Russian colonization (Preobrazhensky 1972; Oborin 1990), which determined the modern spatial sociocultural patterns in the area. In the past, communication and mobility networks of the societies in Eastern Europe and the Urals area were based mostly on rivers, which always played an extraordinary role, as it was noticed by European historians since Herodotus (Hassan 2011). The Kama River occupies an exceptional place among the Ural rivers linking west, east, north, and south of Eurasia and carrying special settlement, transport, communication, and life-supporting functions since the Palaeolithic (Belavin 2023). The Kama and its tributaries provided access to the mining resources of the Ural Mountains, the Volga River route, and forest zone furs, facilitating the movement of goods, people, and technology. Human economic activities such as agricultural practices, fishing, hunting, timber, and mining have likely had a strong impact on the environments of the Urals and neighbouring areas. However, the environmental dynamics in the area remain poorly studied, and a comprehensive understanding of long-term human-environment interaction in relation to the settlement history is still lacking. Recently, combined palaeoecological and archaeological reconstructions have been provided primarily for the Upper Kama region (Lapteva 2014; Demakov et al. 2016; Lapteva et al. 2017; Trofimova et al. 2019; Lapteva and Sarapulov 2020; Zaretskaya et al. 2020; Lychagina et al. 2021; Lapteva et al. 2023) and for the Kungur forest-steppe (Shumilovskikh et al. 2021b; Hiebenga et al. 2024). The Middle Kama region deserves special attention in this respect since this region served as a communication area for both cross-Uralic transactions and interactions between forest-steppe pastoralists and farmers and the taiga zone hunters, fishers and gatherers. Surprisingly, the region is poorly studied. Except of Chernaya record (Shumilovskikh et al. 2020), pollen records from the Mid-Kama lack high temporal resolution and comparison to archaeology (Gerasimov 1926; Henckel and Lebedeva 1940; Danilova 1948; Storozheva 1962). To close this gap and investigate a human-environment interrelation over the last ~ 10,000 years in detail we extracted a core from the western edge of the Paltinskoe peat bog (Fig. 1), surrounded by numerous archaeological sites attributed to the Stone, Bronze, Iron, and Middle Ages (Fig. 2). The peat core Shabunichi-1 has been studied for loss-on-ignition (LOI), pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs), micro- and macrocharcoal analyses. The results were compared (Fig. 9) to the Chernaya record (Shumilovskikh et al. 2020). The study aims to investigate: (1) vegetation and climate dynamics in the Mid-Kama region during the Holocene; (2) human impact on the local ecosystems Fig. 1  Physical map of Europe with the study area and its current vegetation (Bohn et al. 2003) with the location of the study site (Shabunichi-1) and other available palaeoecologically investigated sites on the Mi (...truncated)