ИСТИНА

The purpose of this work was to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental conditions for the time interval of the construction of a large kurgan in the Krasnodar Oblast, Russia. The investigated kurgan 1 in the Beysuzhek-9 kurgan group was located on the high floodplain of the Levyi Beysuzhek River among the agricultural fields. In the kurgan, three different mounds were singled out. According to archaeological data, the first and second mounds in the kurgan was built by representatives of the Novotitor culture at the end of Early - at the beginning of Middle Bronze Age, the 27th (26th) – the 22nd(21st) centuries BC. And the third mound was built by representatives of the Catacomb culture, the 21st – the 16th (15th) centuries BC. The soil pits were made under all three identified mounds in the kurgan. Morphogenetic analysis of all the soils was conducted, and palinological analysis was made in samples from the upper 0-5 cm layer of these soils. Our studies allow us to conclude that the studied kurgan 1 in the Beysuzhek-9 kurgan group began to be built in a favorable bioclimatic period with the predominance of Haplic Chernozems formed under diverse vegetation cover. At the turn of the third and second millennium BC the ecological crisis associated with a sharp increase in climate aridization occurred in the steppe area of Russia as it follows from the literature data. The properties of the soil buried under the third mound of the studied kurgan 1 confirmed this conclusion. The soil can be characterized as Calcic Chernozem with low content of humus and high carbonate content. In the palinological spectrum, plants of Chenopodiaceae family appear, as well as many species that indicate the steppe vegetation and salinity of soils in the landscape.