НАЧАЛЬНЫЙ ЭТАП ОСВОЕНИЯ ЛЕСОСТЕПНЫХ ЛАНДШАФТОВ В ЗОНЕ БЕЛГОРОДСКОЙ ЧЕРТЫ (НА МАТЕРИАЛАХ ПОСЕЛЕНИЙ КОЗЛОВСКОГО И ТАМБОВСКОГО УЕЗДОВ XVII В.)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the first signs of the invasion of the population of the agrarian society into the environment of the Eastern European forest-steppe at the initial stage of its agricultural population. The research is based on the materials of the scribal books of the Kozlovsky and Tambov counties of the 1650s-1670s. The source information was systematized in the form of a database on the Excel. They allowed us to calculate the maximum total area of the most obvious anthropogenic impact on virgin steppe and meadow lands – arable land of different owners (service people, palace peasants, "dety boyarskie", churches and monasteries) for each village. The grouping of the settled data showed their relatively large size of possessions – the predominance of a group of arable land over 500 des. to the village. A very high per capita provision of land was revealed-almost everywhere over 5 des., which was considered the basis of a prosperous peasant economy for the black-earth area with traditional agricultural technologies. On the other hand, it is shown that almost everywhere the demographic burden on land was much lower than 0.25 workers per des. of arable land, which was subsequently considered as a sign of agrarian overpopulation and a demoecological crisis. The results of the study of scribal books also indicate that already in the initial period of the Russian development of this section of the forest-steppe, the size of agricultural land significantly exceeded the area of livestock land. The authors also raised the question of the need to study the size of forest reduction using GIS technologies and unmanned aerial vehicles.