Dynamiques fluviales et mobilité des paysages dans la vallée du Sambek à l’âge du bronze (nord-est de la mer d’Azov)

Abstract

We present results of a geomorphological-sedimentological study on the Holocene evolution and the Bronze Age palaeoenvironment of a lowland river valley in the Russian northeastern Azov Sea hinterland. The study investigates the valley of the Sambek, 15 km west of the Don Delta. This area has been colonized since the Bronze Age, as settlements and burial mounds testify. The results show that in the early Holocene the valley floor was captured by a meandering river system and sedimentation was dominated by autochthonous processes in oxbow environments. From the mid-Holocene until about fifty years ago, allochthonous processes in the form of overbank deposition prevailed. After the construction of reservoirs along the river course in the 1960s, the fluvial system changed back to autochthonous depositional processes. The prehistoric changes of the fluvial dynamics do not coincide with settlement phases. We assume they were climatically induced. Since the Bronze Age, siltation has caused a 3–4 m elevation of the valley floor.