ИСТИНА

The Russian Plain in the second half of the Holocene is an area of considerable rhythmic climate variations with alternating colder and warmer, more arid and more humid stages (Demkin, 1997; Aleksandrovskiy and Aleksandrovskaya, 2005; Chendev et al., 2017; Khokhlova et al., 2018; Rusakov et al., 2019). Climatic rhythms entailed the transformation of the whole complex of landscape parameters, including soils. During the Late Holocene the Russian plain seems to be an arena of complex interactions of different civilizations bordering Caspian – Black Sea – Mediterranean Corridor from the North. Indo-Iranian tribes occupied the territory in the northern Black and Azov sea areas within the Dnepr and Don River basins, penetrating deep to the north-east reaching the southern border of the forest zone (e.g., Middle Volga basin, Chuvashia Republic, Mihailov et al., 2014). Ethnic shifts were largely determined by the climatic rhythms recorded in the buried soils of archaeological sites, especially burial mounds of the Bronze Age and fortification ramparts of the Early Iron Age.